My USB drives are shown as Write Protected - how do I unprotect them

Well, I left my crystal ball in the other room so I'm going to guess on this one.

It would be real handy if you would append a description of the drive, but at the absolute worst, I just risk being wrong.

If you are looking at a USB Flash drive, then look for a slider on the unit that say "Write Protect or Lock." Slide the lever the opposite way, The unit should be fine now. Normally the lock is used to keep sneaky fingers from dropping parasites on the USB disc.

these steps should work, I have done it before for my usb drive -Post back


1) Click Start->Run.

2)Type regedit and hit enter.

3)Click file and click Export and give a file name and save. Just to rollback if you want.

4)Click on the plus sign next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

5)Click on the plus sign next to SYSTEM

6)Click on the plus sign next to CurrentControlSet

7)Click on the plus sign next to Control

8)Click on the plus sign next to StorageDevicePolicies

9)Write click on WriteProtect and click modify.

10)If the value data is 1 change it 0 and click OK.

11)Repeat steps 7 to 10 for ControlSet001 and ControlSet002 .

12)Close Registry editor and restart the computer.