I found another couple of bits of advice:
'Is there any physical damage to the drive? Is the plastic enclosure loose? If so you could try to "snug" up all the connections by wrapping it in a tight layer of tape.'
'Plug in the flash drive. Slowly and somewhat gently move it side to side. Listen for the ding dong of windows picking up the drive.
There are some prongs that are soldered onto a chip inside the flash drive. It's what provides the connection from the chip to the metal tip. Often, those soldered prongs break loose of the chip. You can plug in the drive, and hold those prongs down to make a connection. Once windows picks up the drive, copy off everything that's on it.'
Your friend might also like to try downloading USBDeview from http://www.majorgeek.../usbdeview.html
as the program might help the computer to detect the thumb drive.
Edited by Channeal, 14 October 2016 - 02:40 AM.