Its a driver issue with Vista Snoop. Linux and XP have been around long enough for the relevant drivers to be available but some items such as certain flash drives dont have that support yet.
So someone, at HP, with an Indian accent has just told me.

It's bloody annoying when you have done some work on a laptop, saved it and then can't download it onto the PC to edit/work on it. The PC give a little "Bllep" when you put the flash drive in and then it simply refuses to accept that it exists. Even going to "My Computer" and looking for it will not show it, then when I try to click off "My Computer" it refuses to let me until I remove the flash drive when everything starts working again.
Another flash drive will let me save to it from the PC no problem. Any of them, when plugged in, sit there with their little light flashing so the bloody machine is aware of them.
Where this gets to be a problem is that Wife and Daughter both have laptops but save to pen drives and use the PC to print from. It was deemed cheaper that having four printers. Also those connected to the PC, which being the most used piece of kit for business purposes, is the one with the expensive laser printer is the one they both want to use for their presentations. I really don't want to have to go back to them putting stuff on discs, apart from anything else the Asus doesn't have a disc or a CDR slot in it.