I picked up a couple of USB Memory sticks (1GB) which have a company presentation on it. I wanted to use it for my files, however it is right protected.

It does not have a switch on it, so I assume it is software right protected. I have Windows Vista and have tried many things, however none worked.

Does that mean the sticks are useless and to be thrown away?

Any help will be happily received.

see if this may help,this involves editing the registry,

This works if your mp3 player or usb flash device works fine with other computers.




1) Click Start->Run.

2)Type regedit and hit enter.

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.

Thank you for this.

I followed your directions, however on the vista Home version I have there is no StorageDevicePolicies or a WriteProtect file. It just says Storage, but has no file in it.

you can try this, I suggest make a backup of the registry before try and if dows not work, click file and restore registry right back to where it was before changes made.

start, run, regedit
-click on file and choose export, save to a location you can find easily

This is your registry backup, anything does not work with instructions below, click on the file you just saved and the registry will go back to where it was before you changed anything.

Close all apps and try procedure below




If you don't find it in the registry, the best way is to create it yourself. Below is the procedure.


Start the Registry Editor

Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control key

If there is no key called StorageDevicePolicies, create it
.
You do this by right-clicking the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control key, and selecting New > Key from the menu.

Select the StorageDevicePolicies key

From the menu select Edit > New > DWORD Value

Name the new value WriteProtect

Right-click the WriteProtect value and choose Modify

In the Value Data: box enter 1

Exit the registry editor, and restart your computer

To reverse, just delete the new WriteProtect value (or set the value to 0) and restart the computer.