Usually it helps to clear the first sector of that device. So on Linux, try this as non-root:
insert the usb drive, check
dmesg
to see what device it gets asigned (assuming /dev/sdc here)dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=1
fdisk /dev/sdc (add a partition in here)
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1 (or any other filesystem you want)