 It's not a good site when you have to access some really important files from your external hard drive and Windows 10 throws the USB device not recognized at you. Before you hurt yourself or your USB device, try these fixes and maybe thank us later. Restart your computer. Plug your device out and restart your computer once. Yeah, sometimes a simple restart can solve the toughest issues. Try USB on a different PC. Maybe your USB device is not to blame. It should be that the port of the computer you are working on has malfunctioned. To check this, plug your USB device into a different PC. If it works fine there, your existing PC needs repairs. Update your USB port driver. It could be that you are receiving the USB device not recognized error because your USB port driver is corrupt or outdated. To quickly fix this, you can use a driver updater tool like Advanced Driver Updater. You may ask why? For the simple reason that time is money and Advanced Driver Updater doesn't waste time. It easily scans, downloads, installs and even updates drivers on Windows in just a few clicks quickly. And when we say quickly, all you have to do is download, run and install Advanced Driver Updater. Click on Start Scan now to look for outdated drivers. From the Scan list, click on the checkbox next to your outdated USB port driver and click on Update Driver. What next? Let the magic happen and you may have just resolved the issue. Change Power Management Setting. Here is a workaround that may work out for you. Open the Run dialog box by pressing Windows plus R and then hit Enter. In the dialog box, type the command showing you on the screen and press Enter. Locate the Universal Serial Bus Controllers dropdown and click on it. Click on the USB Root Hub option and further click on Properties. Click on the Power Management tab and uncheck the Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power and press OK. Repeat this procedure if there are multiple USB Root Hubs. That's it. Plug your USB back in and it should be working fine. If you found this video helpful, don't forget to like, share and subscribe.