Screwed Up USB Key

Well, I've done it this time. I have a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 256mb thimb drive and I think that I screwed it up for good. A while ago when I reformatted, my USB key was (unknown to me) attached to my computer. To make a long story short, I accidentally formatted my thumb drive using the Windows partition utility. Whoops. Now, when I try to use it, Windows tells me that I need to format the disk, but when I try to do so, it gives me an error message saying that there is a problem and the disk can not be formatted. Did I just screw up my USB key for good or can I (hopefully) save it?

did you try running the format command through command prompt? format /u?

Know Nuttin said:

did you try running the format command through command prompt? format /u?

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No, I haven't tried that yet. I'm at school currently, so I'll give it a try when I get home this afternoon.

Just tried it. the format command did not work.

Try it through Windows disk management.

run a chkdsk /r on it first. then try format again.
I'm not sure of the default filesystem XP will use but I would use FAT/FAT32 just in case you need to work on a Windows98/ME machine.

format driveletter /fs:fat32

If those still fails, see if you have a fdisk somewhere and run that within Window, maybe that drive will show up. If it does work, delete the partition (if any), then create a new partition and try formatting again.