repair usb flash drive

I was re-installing winXP-PRO,I was about to delete the old OS partition and saw 976 MB in the same window but below the 74845…of the same window(80GB Hard Drive)I tried to delete then install the OS on the 976MB on two tries (it is too small)then gave up on deleting and completed the installation on the 74845…MB,I later realized my Thumb Pen drive was connected to the system,the 976MB was the Thumb\pen drive ,now I’m trying to use my Thumb drive and my system displays that “Please insert a disk in drive F:.” when I try to format I get “cannot be formatted ” can it be used or do I get a new Thumb\Flash\Pen Drive.What can be done to bring it back to life and use or give it,it’s last Rights..
then my next step would be to check with the flash drive’s manufacturer to see if they have a special utility for formatting the drive..
Make sure the flashdrive is present when booting with Parted, and format it to FAT32 or NTFS. That should be it, your flashdrive is resurrected. If you want to get the data that was on it, search for “recovery” on Download.com and choose “Free” in the sidebar. You will get enough hits to make sure you get what you want.