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Thread: USB Removable Drive - Access Denied...

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  1. #1
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    Default USB Removable Drive - Access Denied...

    I have come across a weird problem twice now and wondered if anyone else had experienced it - if so what their solution was.

    When plugging in a USB Flash Drive it is recognised by the Windows XP system but then comes up "F:/, Access Denied". Other USB flash drives do exactly the same, yet work fine on all other XP systems, indicating it's not a problem with the drives themselves.

    My guess is it's something to do with drive permissions, or a corruption in the registry. I've uninstalled the respective devices & the related storage volumes from the Device Manager & let Windows re-detect which it does, but still with Access Denied when trying to open them. I've even manually edited the CurrentControlSet in the registry but still the same problem.

    When I experienced this the first time I backed up, wiped & reinstalled everything which worked fine, but is a bit extreme just to get certain USB devices to work. However if I have to then I'll do it again - I was just hoping someone may have an idea.



  2. #2
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    sorry bobinovich, i have never had that trouble so cant really offer any real advice...

    could it be an IRQ conflict?

    Other than that i can only guess at it being a software error... i am not saying a bad install of XP is the culprit, are there any music programs that could be trying to connect and manage the usb device that is causing the conflict?

    hope Blueivy can come to the rescue....
    I hope mother nature remembers my actions when it comes to collect its dues....

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stumurf View Post
    hope Blueivy can come to the rescue....
    Was that just a touch of sarcasm I hear there ....
    Kind regards,

    Paul Broadwith
    Blue Ivy Ltd, Wick - Certified Microsoft Small Business Specialist

  4. #4
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    Thanks for those ideas. I've looked over a few of them already but there's a couple of new ones for me to try out - I'll let you know how I get on .



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    Quote Originally Posted by blueivy View Post
    Was that just a touch of sarcasm I hear there ....
    you have mighty fine hearing if you did..

    no offence... just playin...

    BOBINOVICH...

    are the USB Drives using FAT 32? If you have formated them to NTFS i have found that using the drives on a machine that didnt format them can cause such problems... not sure why i didnt remember this initially, but hope you get it sorted....
    I hope mother nature remembers my actions when it comes to collect its dues....

  6. #6
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    just a couple of things
    With the device unplugged go into My Computer and see if drive F has already been assigned to something else. You may be running extra hardrives or dvd roms. Or have you got a virtual drive setup which has been given this letter.

    If the drive has been backed up maybe try and format the flash drive as FAT instead of Fat32 and see if that works

  7. #7
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    Hmmm, OK no luck so far. After another visit it turned out that ALL removable storage (floppies, DVD/CD, USB drives, etc.) were causing the same error message.

    I did some sleuthing and looked at the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) > Storage > Removable Storage security permissions but they are all set to Allow access.

    I tried creating a new Administrator account but still got the same results when I logged into it.

    It's not a drive formatting problem as the USB drives read fine on other PC's, the contents of the customer's own USB drive are still intact.

    I'm not sure where else to look - I'm sure it must be a registry corruption problem but where to look? Nevermind, there's not a lot on this particular PC so I'm just going to backup, wipe & reinstall from the recovery partition which, if nothing else, makes things speedy.

    Thanks for your ideas anyway.



  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bobinovich View Post
    I have come across a weird problem twice now and wondered if anyone else had experienced it - if so what their solution was.

    When plugging in a USB Flash Drive it is recognised by the Windows XP system but then comes up "F:/, Access Denied". Other USB flash drives do exactly the same, yet work fine on all other XP systems, indicating it's not a problem with the drives themselves.

    My guess is it's something to do with drive permissions, or a corruption in the registry. I've uninstalled the respective devices & the related storage volumes from the Device Manager & let Windows re-detect which it does, but still with Access Denied when trying to open them. I've even manually edited the CurrentControlSet in the registry but still the same problem.

    When I experienced this the first time I backed up, wiped & reinstalled everything which worked fine, but is a bit extreme just to get certain USB devices to work. However if I have to then I'll do it again - I was just hoping someone may have an idea.
    I've had problems with drives before suddenly denying me access and the problem was actually down to group policy not being applied properly at logon to the network. While your computer may not be part of a domain, it could be down to the local machine policy on it. However that would generally restrict all (USB) drives all of the time and not just some of them.

    Is this limited to one account or to all of the accounts on the machine? Have you tried to see what happens when you are logged on with the Administrator account and not just an account which is a member of Administrators?

    Is there anything in the Event Viewer on the machine to indicate any problems?

    If you open the USB icon on the system tray, check the Display Device Components box, select the device (not the volume) and click Properties is there anything in there that's unusual?

    What are the drive permissions? Have you reset them and taken ownership of it?

    The only other things that springs to mind are:
    • a corrupted file system on the USB drive, however you'd then expect it to continue to do it even after wiping the machine.
    • a corrupted registry and this would explain why it works when you wipe it.
    • Virus / spyware restricting access for a laugh.
    I'm sure you've checked most of these but thought I'd throw them out there anyway!
    Last edited by blueivy; 11-Jan-07 at 21:08.
    Kind regards,

    Paul Broadwith
    Blue Ivy Ltd, Wick - Certified Microsoft Small Business Specialist

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