USB flash drive not showing up / SMC not resetting

[jigs]

i have two possibly related problems with my mid-2012 rMBP, and im hoping someone here has had (and hopefully solved) the same problem.

1. last week my USB thumb drive stopped being appearing in finder. thinking it broken, i went and bought a replacement today. it, however, is also failing to appear in finder. ive tried:
- using disk utility with both drives but neither one mounts or is even detected by disk utility (even when booted in recovery mode)
- reading them on a windows machine. the old one no longer is recognized in windows either, but the new one is.
- reformatting (the new one as both NTFS and FAT32)
...but none of this has made any difference. i still cannot read the drives. i also read a few other posts about how resetting the SMC controller could help, but...

2. my SMC controller doesnt seem to be resetting. as far as i can tell, i am following the instructions. but there is no indication that it is resetting. (i.e. mag-safe light going orange for a sec, which happened the last time i tried resetting the SMC). i am pressing and holding ctrl+shift+option+power, sometimes for a second, sometimes for 10 seconds. sometimes i press ctrl+shift+option just a spilt second before the power, sometimes the other way around. the mag-safe light doesnt change.

has this happened to anyone else?

 

[DeltaMac]

Shift-Control-Option keys must all be keys on the left side of the keyboard, none on right. So, those 3 keys, plus the power button, all at the same time.
Your MBPro should shut off when you do that. The only time that your Magsafe connector light will change is if the battery is charging (and is already orange). The connector LED will change briefly to GREEN, then after a few seconds will change to orange, and continue charging. If you want to see that happen, run on battery so the battery goes below 95% charge, then try the SMC reset. Again, should go green, then return to orange in 3 - 5 seconds. That SHOULD reset the USB bus, but be sure to try a PRAM reset, too. Won't hurt anything.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14222?viewlocale=en_US