Device connectivity issues...HELP! Devices won't show up in Finder

17" MacbookPro from '07
2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
OS 10.5.8

I've been having this problem for a couple of years now where I can't see any external device connected to my computer. This ranges from USB flash drives, iPod video, iPod classic, external hdd, and most recently a Kindle Keyboard. All of these devices show up in system profiler, but not in finder or disk utility. In the past there has only been one solution, but it has proven to be a very short lived one. This was to delete the old itunes install pkg and reinstall the program. Why this worked, I don't know, but that was a solution that an apple store genius gave me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks,

pr0bie

if you go on finder at the top and click on finder preferences, is external disks got a tick in box? If it has not then i would put the tick in and then see if you can see the hard drive etc.

Domb said:

if you go on finder at the top and click on finder preferences, is external disks got a tick in box? If it has not then i would put the tick in and then see if you can see the hard drive etc.

Click to expand...

I wish it were so simple as not having the box checked in finder preferences but the only box under Finder preferences is the one for iDisk.

usb connectivity

if you find the solution to this issue, please let me know as I am having the exactly same problem (it appeared after installing a new program which requires a usb dongle for authentification)

some usb sticks are reckognized and displayed properly some are not (particularly my camera is not reckogniezed (same is true for the sd card slot), I can see it however in the system profiler)

If anybody can help it would be greatly appreciated

thanks

I had a similar problem and the solution was to open Finder Preferences > Sidebar and then check External Disks.