Files (used to) appear on smartphone but not on Windows Explorer I had a couple files missing on my Windows Explorer, despite being able to play files on the device itself.

One tutorial told me to update my MTP driver, through Device Manager, I did, no changes.

I decided to solve this "discussed and known issue" by doing what everybody (here on Android SE) said solved it for them. So I entered into the Apps, and purged cache of two system applications, External Storage and Media Storage, then rebooted.

Allegedly after reboot, I had to leave my phone alone for about 10 minutes, for it to "rebuilt its cache", so I did. After it rebooted, I put it into my pocket, not giving it any extra data, after some 2 hours. I attached my Android to computer, the entire drive is empty, only customized-capability.xml was visible.

Smartphone also lost touch with the SD card, to the point where the music application forgot last played music (understandable) and doesn't detect music from various folders (atypical). I need to use external app called File Commander (which is somewhat comparable to Windows Explorer) to manually navigate to the SD card, after tapping music it will play, so no data is lost, but it is inaccessible to even my own device now.

Windows Explorer and File Commander tell me that there's only 3GB left (which makes sense in my scenario), but Windows won't display the files.

How do I solve this? How can I get phone and my computer to recognize the files?

Android 7.1.1
Sony Xperia Z5

P.S.: Yes, I did look thoroughly, there's no hidden files here.
Make sure External Storage and Media Storage are running .
Rescan SD Card! Add the path to your SD and scan (Usually something like /sdcard or /storage/****-**** ). Reboot...
If second doenst work you could try: adb Guide or adb Driver :


On your phone: 

Enable Developer Options on your phone -> Enable
 USB-Debugging -> Plug-in USB-cabel

On your PC:

Windows: Windows Key + R -> cmd ->  adb devices: 

List all available devices:
Something like:

List of devices attached
9cc74efc        device


If you see your device :

adb root &amp;&amp; adb shell

am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_MOUNTED -d file:///sdcard


Source