One reader mailed us asking how can he make his portable USB drive write protected so no data can be deleted or added on the pen drive, this is what he said in his mail

I want to make my drive write protected on every computer where I connect my drive

Portable drives or cards can be write protected by two ways either by physical lock provided on some of the pen drives, but locking the drive with physical lock is not a good way as any one can move the physical lock and make your drive writable.

Make Drive Write Protected With Physical Lock

Second method to make the drive write protected involves a registry hack which actually is computer dependent not the drive as it deals with registry.

Note: With this registry hack you will actually make all the removable drives connected to your computer write protected, as this registry hack instructs windows to make any removable storage device write protected.

Write Protect Instructions

Download writeprotect.bat in a zip package from here and extract the files on pen drive and double click writeprotect.bat to make your drive write protected. You will need to eject your pen drive once after launching the batch file to make your drive write protected on the computer.

Disable Write Protect Instructions

Download disablewriteprotect.bat in a zip package from here (this package is same as bove, download any of these two) and extract the files on the pen drive and double click disablewriteprotect.bat to disable write protection on your pen drive. You will need to eject your pen drive once after launching the batch file to disable write protection.

Note: I have tested these batch files on Windows XP and it should also work on windows vista too.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

Make Pen Drive Write Protected is a post from TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles

We have observed this problem at may places that you need some data on your pen drive but the USB drive or pen drive does not work. Windows gives a notification

“Found new hardware, USB Mass Storage Device, please install drivers for it.”

Windows will now show a New Hardware Wizard to install the drivers. Lets see in details how we can fix this problem.

Fix:

There are more than one ways in which the USB drives are disabled by Administrators at offices or colleges or schools. These methods are:

1. By Disabling USB Ports from Device Manager.

2. By Tweaking Registry values for USB Mass Storage Devices.

3. By Un-installing the USB Mass Storage Drivers.

We will see how to fix all these situations one by one. But before you begin, you must have administrator rights on that computer to fix the issue. If you don’t have the rights, see this post on getting admin rights on windows computer.

Lets go one by one for the solution now.

Unlock USB ports from device manager:

i) Go to Start > Run, in run prompt type “devmgmt.msc” and press enter. This will open device manager.

ii) Go to Universal Serial bus Controller. See if there are any red colored cross? If yes, right click and enable those USB Ports.

Now try and use the pen drive. If it works fine, then great, else read the next two steps also.

Correct Registry Value for USB Mass Storage device

i) Go to Start > Run , type “regedit” and press enter, this will open registry editor.

ii) Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR

iii) Double-click on the “Start” key to modify its value, change the value to 3 and press OK.

Now remove and connect the pen drive again, it should work fine, if it does not, then it means the drivers are missing. Follow the steps below to solve the issue.

Install USB Mass Storage Device drivers

In case the USB Mass Storage drivers are not installed, windows will prompt you to install the driver. In such a case, windows will launch Hardware Update Wizard. If you have USB Mass storage drivers, you can install it and restart the computer, it should work. If not, you can download the USB Mass Storage drivers here. Download and uznip the driver files on your desktop.

i) In hardware update wizard, Select the option to install the driver from a specific location and click next.

ii) Now on this screen, click browse and select the path on which you have un-zipped the drivers and press ok.

NOTE: Windows may give you a warning that the drivers has not passed Windows logo testing, so stop installation or Continue anyway, Select Continue anyway to complete installation.

Now restart your computer and re-insert your pen drive, it should now work.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

Pen drive blocked-disabled at office or college computer – Unblock it is a post from TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles