USB Device : Windows delayed write failed ?

I have been using my portable hard disk drive for more than an year now. Its a laptop hard-disk of 2.5 inches, 80GB capacity with a USB 2.0 casing. By now the drive has become nearly full, there is little free space.

Three days back, I got a warning saying

“Windows delayed write failed - Windows was unable to save all the data for the file M:\$Mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this data elsewhere.”

For a moment I thought that disk is going faulty, but with some hit and trial, I got it fixed.

Let me share the solution with you.

Fix:

This kind of problem is observed when the drive is almost full and there is some problem being faced by the disk in maintaining the file allocation table. This problem can be fixed in some easy steps:

1. Delete some un-necessary stuff from your drive and make at-least 5% of the total disk space as free space.

2. Open My Computer, right click on the USB drive, click on properties.

3. Go to Tools > Error-checking and select option to check now as shown in the image below.

4. This will show a window like the one below. Check the check-boxes to Automatically fix the file system and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. Click Start.

NOTE: If you are not able to run this scan, disconnect the drive and try again. If the USB malfunction error is received.

This scan may take a few minutes to a few hours depending on the disk size and type of file system. Keep patience and let it complete properly. Once this is done, re-start your computer.

Source : http://www.troublefixers.com/delayed-write-failed-error-with-usb-drive/

Download Thumbscrew : USB Write Blocker

Majority of the virus problem which we receive from the readers are those cases which infect the system through pen drives. According to our records about 40 percent of the total computer systems got virus or trojan infection through pen drives and USB portable devices like iPOd, Mp3 players etc.

Yesterday, I found a cool utility called Thumbscrew : USB Write Blocker , you can use this utility to disable writing to your USB drive. You can read full review about the utility here

Let’s see how can you use this utility to protect your drive from viruses

Fix:

Thumbscrew is small handy utility which you can take any where on your pen drive use it to protect your pen drive from viruses on other computer systems by disabling Writing on that system. You can download thumbscrew here.

Follow the procedure below to protect your pen drive from viruses

1. In order to protect your pen drive from viruses you need to create a blank file named autorun.inf through notepad and place it in the root directory.

2. When you insert pen drive on any virus infected computer system it will throw a message that some thing is trying to copy and replace a file located in the root directory of your USB device and that is nothing but a virus.

Source :

http://www.troublefixers.com/disable-data-writing-on-your-usb-drive-to-protect-it-from-viruses/

he computer detects the pen drive but data on pen drive is not visible as the pen drive is not visible in My Computer ?

You may have faced a problem when you insert your pen drive and it gets detected very easily but it doesn’t show up as a drive icon in My Computer. The computer detects the pen drive but data on pen drive is not visible as the pen drive is not visible in My Computer (Explorer).

This problem occurs mainly when windows XP fails to allocate a drive letter to your portable drive(pen drive). It occurs mostly with new pen drives connected to your computer for the first time. If you face such problem then it may not be the pen drive’s fault, rather it may be windows trouble.

Fix:

You can fix this issue by following some simple steps given below.

1. Click Start, click Run, type compmgmt.msc, and then click OK.

2. In the console tree, click Disk Management. The Disk Management window will appear.

3. On this disk management window, you can see some drives including the portable drive. Right click on your portable drive and click change drive letter and paths.

4. Now assign a new drive letter which is not being used by any of your drives in My Computer.

5. After assigning the new drive letter your portable drive will show up in my computer with other drives

We hope the above solution will help to fix this trouble.

How a virus in your pen drive infects?

We have received lot of problems where computers got infected easily by the viruses in the pen drives, pen drives have become one of the most easiest carriers of various types of viruses these days.

We will tell you how pen drives normally infect your computer systems and how can you open pen drive safely and back up your important data.

How a virus in your pen drive infects?

Most of the active viruses infect your windows system as soon as you double click on the Pen Drive icon in your my computer. As virus always creates a autorun.inf file which is a system ,hidden and a read only file on your pen drive. It point to the main virus file which is also located on the pen drive. When user double clicks on the pen drive files pointed by the autorun.inf got executed which copies the virus files on your system.

The image below shows the Autorun file entries in some special characters when you right click on the drive.

Let’s see how can you protect yourself by following certain practices.

Fix:

Let’s discuss these practices one by one:

1. Disable Autorun on Your Pen Drive:

• Open to Start >> Run and type “gpedit.msc” (without quotes) and press enter. This will open Group policy editor.
• Browse to Administrative templates >> System >> double click on Turn off Autoplay click on Enabled and Under Settings >> Select All Drives in the drop down and click OK (as shown in the image below)

2. Scan Your Pen Drive:

Whenever you insert your pen drive / portable drive into USB port on your system make sure to run a virus scan with your anti virus before opening your pen drive contents in windows explorer.

3. Use FreeCommander:

FreeCommander is again a file explorer like windows explorer, so you just need to download it by clicking here and install it.

After installing open your pen drive through FreeCommander (as shown in the image below)

Check if there are some additional files like autorun.inf , Funny UST Scandal.avi.exe ,Ravmon.exe ,New Folder.exe etc or any other file which you have not copied or created, delete all these suspicious files on your pen drive.

Source : http://www.troublefixers.com/how-to-protect-your-computer-from-virus-in-pen-drives/

Can not removely safely a pen drive ?

We attach portable USB device like pen drive, memory cards and portable drives etc. on our computer to transfer files from/to your computer.

When you try to remove a USB pen-drive by using “Safely Remove Hardware > Safely remove USB Mass Storage device” option, windows should stop all the read-write operations on the drive so that the drive can be removed.

But sometimes when you try to eject the USB device by using “Safely remove USB Mass Storage device” option, it shows a message box which says:

“The Device Generic volume cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device later”

In such case its not safe to remove the pen drive as it can get corrupt or get damaged. Many of us face such problem in removing pen-drive. In this post we will see how to fix such issue.

Let’s see why it happens and the fix

Fix:

This error comes when you have an application which is running from your pen drive or may be some file or document opened from your pen-drive when you are removing your drive.

In short, some file on your pen drive is in use by some other program on that computer. So close all such files or applications and try removing the drive.

Pen drive blocked-disabled at office or college computer - Unblock it

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.

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.

Source : http://www.troublefixers.com/pen-drive-locked-at-office-or-college-computer-unlock-it/

Pen Drive doesn’t show up as a drive icon in My Computer ?

You may have faced a problem when you insert your pen drive and it gets detected very easily but it doesn’t show up as a drive icon in My Computer. The computer detects the pen drive but data on pen drive is not visible as the pen drive is not visible in My Computer (Explorer).

This problem occurs mainly when windows XP fails to allocate a drive letter to your portable drive(pen drive). It occurs mostly with new pen drives connected to your computer for the first time. If you face such problem then it may not be the pen drive’s fault, rather it may be windows trouble.

Fix:

You can fix this issue by following some simple steps given below.

1. Click Start, click Run, type compmgmt.msc, and then click OK.

2. In the console tree, click Disk Management. The Disk Management window will appear.

3. On this disk management window, you can see some drives including the portable drive. Right click on your portable drive and click change drive letter and paths.

4. Now a assign a new drive letter which is not being used by any of your drives in My Computer.

5. After assigning the new drive letter your portable drive will show up in my computer with other drives

My computer does not detect pen drives and other USB devices like iPod or external hard drive

Fix:

In normal cases when you think your system is not detecting pen drives, it could be a case when your computer detects your pen drive but does not show up in my computer.

Method 1:

This could be due to no free drive letter has been assigned to your pen drive.

Method 2:

If none of your USB devices detect ,this could be due to wrong registry entries. i.e you need to delete UpperFilters and the LowerFilters registry values.

Method 2:

If none of your USB devices detect ,this could be due to wrong registry entries. i.e you need to delete UpperFilters and the LowerFilters registry values.

Follow the procedure listed below to correct your registry:

1. Open Start >> Run, and type "regedit" (without double quotes), and click OK.

2. Locate UpperFilters registry value. it resides in the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E980-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

3. Click on Edit menu, and select Delete and click OK.
Note: If you receive an error when you try to delete the registry subkey, you may not have correct permissions to edit the subkey.

4. Locate LowerFilters registry value. It resides in the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

5. Click on Edit menu, and select Delete and click OK.
6. Exit Registry Editor and restart your system.

Note : For all user, always be careful to work with registry values. If necessary take expert hands to solve this way.

Top 10 USB drive / pen drive related problems and fixes:

Top 10 USB drive / pen drive related problems and fixes:

Lets see a short summary of each problem and the fix:

Fix:

1. Computer Does Not Detect Pen Drive or USB Drive or i-pod : This kind of problem is faced due to some bad registry settings. After you fix up the registry, the USB drive will work fine.
2. Pen Drive or USB Mass storage device disabled at office or college or school: At many offices and colleges, the IT people disable or block the use of pen drives.
3. Problem in removing pen drive: When you try to remove the pen drive via safely remove hardware option, it gives error “Generic volume can not be stopped right now”. It may damage your pen drive if it is removed without stopping it properly.
4. Protect computer from virus in pen drive: Many of the deadly viruses spread easily through use of pen drive.
5. USB drive is detected, but not shown in My Computer: This kind of problem is also seen in cases of conflict over drive letter assignment by windows. The drive is there and detected but without a valid drive letter assigned to it.
6. Problem in formatting pen drive: Sometimes when you try to format the pen drive, you might see an error which says “Can not format the drive”. There can be several reasons for this.
7. USB Device has Malfunctioned: This one of the unusual warnings which you get sometimes, the solutions to this problems sounds silly, but it works. See the solution in this blog later.
8. Delayed Write failed error: This is another kind of error which is more common with USB hard drives due to some error in File allocation table. This problem can be fixed by following few simple steps.
9. Disable data writing on pen drive: This is one of the articles which tells you how you can stop data writing on your pen drive on a particular computer. This will save the drive from getting virus infections.
10. Fixed SATA Drive shown in removable USB drive list: This problem we have recently seen for many users. This is a kind for feature in a certain RAID configuration, but annoys many users.
    

Microsoft Word Shortcut Keys

Shortcut Keys	Description
Ctrl + A	Select all contents of the page.
Ctrl + B	Bold highlighted selection.
Ctrl + C	Copy selected text.
Ctrl + X	Cut selected text.
Ctrl + P	Open the print window.
Ctrl + F	Open find box.
Ctrl + I	Italic highlighted selection.
Ctrl + K	Insert link.
Ctrl + U	Underline highlighted selection.
Ctrl + V	Paste.
Ctrl + Y	Redo the last action performed.
Ctrl + Z	Undo last action.
Ctrl + L	Aligns the line or selected text to the left of the screen.
Ctrl + E	Aligns the line or selected text to the center of the screen.
Ctrl + R	Aligns the line or selected text to the right of the screen.
Ctrl + M	Indent the paragraph.
Ctrl + Shift + F	Change the font.
Ctrl + Shift + >	Increase selected font +1pts up to 12pt and then increases font +2pts.
Ctrl + ]	Increase selected font +1pts.
Ctrl + Shift + <	Decrease selected font -1pts if 12pt or lower, if above 12 decreases font by +2pt.
Ctrl + [	Decrease selected font -1pts.
Ctrl + Shift + *	View or hide non printing characters.
Ctrl +	Moves one word to the left.
Ctrl +	Moves one word to the right.
Ctrl +	Moves to the beginning of the line or paragraph.
Ctrl +	Moves to the end of the paragraph.
Ctrl + Del	Deletes word to right of cursor.
Ctrl + Backspace	Deletes word to left of cursor.
Ctrl + End	Moves the cursor to the end of the document.
Ctrl + Home	Moves the cursor to the beginning of the document.
Ctrl + Spacebar	Reset highlighted text to the default font.
Ctrl + 1	Single-space lines.
Ctrl + 2	Double-space lines.
Ctrl + 5	1.5-line spacing.
Ctrl + Alt + 1	Changes text to heading 1.
Ctrl + Alt + 2	Changes text to heading 2.
Ctrl + Alt + 3	Changes text to heading 3.
Ctrl + F1	Open the Task Pane.
F1	Open Help.
Alt + Ctrl + F2	Open new document.
Ctrl + F2	Display the print preview.
Shift + F3	Change the text in Microsoft Word from upper to lower case or a capital letter at the beginning of every word.
Shift + Insert	Paste.
F4	Repeat the last action performed (Word 2000+)
F5	Open the find, replace, and go to window in Microsoft Word.
Ctrl + Shift + F6	Opens to another open Microsoft Word document.
F7	Spell and grammar check selected text and/or document.
Shift + F7	Runs a Thesaurus check on the word highlighted.
F12	Save as.
Shift + F12	Save.
Ctrl + Shift + F12	Prints the document.
Alt + Shift + D	Insert the current date.
Alt + Shift + T	Insert the current time.

Microsoft Excel Shortcut Keys

F2	Edit the selected cell.
F5	Goto a specific cell. For example, C6.
F7	Spell check selected text and/or document.
F11	Create chart.
Ctrl + Shift + ;	Enter the current time.
Ctrl + ;	Enter the current date.
Alt + Shift + F1	Insert New Worksheet.
Shift + F3	Open the Excel formula window.
Shift + F5	Bring up search box.
Ctrl + A	Select all contents of the worksheet.
Ctrl + B	Bold highlighted selection.
Ctrl + I	Italic highlighted selection.
Ctrl + K	Insert link.
Ctrl + U	Underline highlighted selection.
Ctrl + 5	Strikethrough highlighted selection.
Ctrl + P	Bring up the print dialog box to begin printing.
Ctrl + Z	Undo last action.
Ctrl + F9	Minimize current window.
Ctrl + F10	Maximize currently selected window.
Ctrl + F6	Switch between open workbooks / windows.
Ctrl + Page up	Move between Excel work sheets in the same Excel document.
Ctrl + Page down	Move between Excel work sheets in the same Excel document.
Ctrl + Tab	Move between Two or more open Excel files.
Alt + =	Create a formula to sum all of the above cells
Ctrl + '	Insert the value of the above cell into cell currently selected.
Ctrl + Shift + !	Format number in comma format.
Ctrl + Shift + $	Format number in currency format.
Ctrl + Shift + #	Format number in date format.
Ctrl + Shift + %	Format number in percentage format.
Ctrl + Shift + ^	Format number in scientific format.
Ctrl + Shift + @	Format number in time format.
Ctrl + Arrow key	Move to next section of text.
Ctrl + Space	Select entire
Shift + Space	Select entire row.

Function Key : F12

• Open the Save as window in Microsoft Word.
• Shift + F12 save the Microsoft Word document.
• Ctrl + Shift + F12 prints a document in Microsoft Word.

Function Key : F10

In Microsoft Windows activates themenu bar of an open application.
Shift + F10 is the same as on a highlighted icon, file, or Internet link.

Function Key : F9

Opens the Measurements toolbar in Quark 5.0.

Function Key : F8

Function key used to enter the Windows startup menu, commonly use to get into Windows Safe Mode.

Function Key : F7

• Commonly used to spell check and grammar check a document in Microsoft programs such as Microsoft Word, Outlook, etc.
• Shift + F7 runs a Thesaurus check on the word highlighted.
• Turns on Caret browsing in Mozilla Firefox.

Function Key : F6

* Move the cursor to the Address bar in Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
* Ctrl + Shift + F6 opens to another open Microsoft Word document.

Function Key : F5

In all modern Internet browsers pressing F5 will refresh or reload the page or document window.

Open the find, replace, and go to window in Microsoft Word.

Starts a slideshow in PowerPoint.

Function Key : F4

• Open find window.
• Repeat the last action performed (Word 2000+)
• Alt + F4 will close the program currently active in Microsoft Windows.
• Ctrl + F4 will close the open window within the current active window in Microsoft Windows.

Function Key : F2

In Windows commonly used to rename a highlighted icon or file.

Alt + Ctrl + F2 opens a new document in Microsoft Word.Ctrl + F2 displays the print preview window in Microsoft Word.