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.
    

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