MEDIA WRITER: "There are no portable drives connected"

Ask Fedora
1

Aim: ISO → USB via Fedora Media Writer
Obstacle: Despite USB inserted, this…“There are no portable drives connected”

I have a log file but do not know how to attach. But if it helps here is some of it:

D@20ms: Application constructed
D@20ms: Injecting QML context properties
D@24ms: DownloadManager User-Agent: “FedoraMediaWriter/5.2.9 (Windows 10 Version 22H2; x86_64-little_endian-llp64; en_US)”
W@32ms: WinDiskManagement[W]: “Could not connect to WMI. Error = IDispatch error #3586”
D@32ms: WinDriveProvider construction
D@32ms: DriveManager construction
D@33ms: ReleaseManager construction
D@33ms: ReleaseManager Received a metadata json
D@36ms: ReleaseManager Adding “cosmic-atomic” “42” “aarch64”
D@36ms: ReleaseManager Adding “cosmic-atomic” “42” “x86_64”

Has anyone any suggestions as to how to move forward?

2

When you connect the USB to the PC do you get a notification on screen and/or a sound to indicate a USB has been connected?
In the file manager do you see the USB and if so, can you connect to it and see what is on it?

In Linux when using the Media Writer the USB may not be mounted, I suppose that is the same in Windows. So, remove the USB, close the file manager and place the USB back into the PC.
Try Media Writer to see if it works now, select a Fedora version and see if the program tells you it has found a USB.
When you still have problems can you use a different USB and/or a different connector in the PC?

Except for work I haven’t touched a Windows PC in 18 years so I know little to nothing how to solve this problem. But do the things I wrote above so if somebody else reads it they know already a bit more.

3

Thanks for your suggestions. No, no progress. File Explorer recognizes the USB and can read its folders but MediaWriter does not. I have tried other sticks, other ports and reformatting but all to no avail.

4

There’s a Github issue here that looks related:

…but it still seems unclear what the root cause is or how to fix it :frowning: