I cannot use any USB flash drive (memory stick) on my Windows XP home PC.

The PC finds new hardware and tries to install it but states that it is unable to find the software to install it.

Can someone tell me what files I should have and in which folders they need to be in so that XP home can install usb flash drives on my PC using the generic drivers.

PS this used to work until I had to have a new HDD and used the file transfer wizard to migrate my XP settings to the new HDD

Thanks in advance

Do you have internet access with this computer?

If so, you should be able to Google the brand and model number and find a driver to download.

I would give that a try.

Give this a try, can't hurt - Windows XP USB 1.1 and 2.0 Update
http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/winxpusb.html

give this a try, can't hurt - Windows XP USB 1.1 and 2.0 Update
http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/winxpusb.html

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

In the end, for other reasons than just the USB installation, I ended re installing XP and this appears to have solved the problem.

There is no need to reinstall windows to fix this. The driver or inf file is damaged. Visit another computer with win xp, search for files named usbstor. Copy files usbstor.inf and usbstor.pnf into windows/inf folder and usbstor.sys into windows/system32/drivers. Now just search for new driver and that's it, usb storage will be recognized.