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USB drive permissions in vista

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by scourge118

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Whenever I put anything in my USB drive, when I try to access it, it says Access is denied. I looked it up on google and found that it was quite a common problem in Vista, and that the problem was in permissions, and all I had to do was to take ownership of whatever I had in my drive. However, when I try to do this, it says Access is denied. What can I do to make Vista let me use my USB drives?

15 replies

by p.j.hutchison

Make sure you are a member of the Local Administrators group which will have rights to take ownership.

by Former member

Right click on the disk and in properties you need to take ownership of the drive. Once you have you then need to give your self full permissions to the drive. Then tick the box replace permissions on all child objects.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

by scourge118

When I try to take ownership, it says that Access is Denied. I also tried this using the administrator account I enabled through the command line, although I myself am already an administrator, to no avail.

by scourge118

I came across that website when I initially googled the problem, unfortunately when I try to change ownership it says Access is Denied. I am not sure why, as I am the only account on the computer, and am an administrator.

by rob miners

Click on Start, Run and type in regedt32.exe and press Enter.

Navigate to this path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Right click on MountedDevices and select Permissions. If your name is not in the list add it and give yourself full control.

Let us know how you get on.

by scourge118

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I still cannot access the device despite having granted myself full control and taken ownership on Mounted Devices. For some reason, when I exit the registry editor, and look in the security settings for the drive, it says Unable to display current owner ( same as before ). Is it possible some other program is locking me out from editing the drive?

by rob miners

restarting the PC. Sometimes it needs a restart for the Registry settings to take effect.

< add a bit >

Make sure that you are using the built in Administrators Account.

by scourge118

Yes, I have tried that. Unfortunately, it still denies me access to both change ownership and open the drive.

by Former member

Delete Usb Drive Letter via Registry to Remove Conflict .
WARNING!!!!
Any changes you make in the registry could make the computer unstable or UN-operable.

In Windows operating system especially Windows XP, when plug in external USB or FireWire mass storage device such as USB key, flash drive, portable harddrive, the drive is not been assigned a drive letter by the system, hence the USB drive or FireWire drive is not showing in Explorer and no AutoPlay or AutoRun window pops up, although the device has been detected, in Safely Remove Hardware (show device but with no drive letter) wizard. The cause is probably due to ?stupid? behavior of XP where it won?t find an available letter from the free letters pool when the USB or FireWire external drive which has previously mounted and assigned a drive letter is been inserted to computer USB or FireWire port again, but that previously allocated drive letter has been taken up and used by another storage devices. Another possible reason is all 26 letters in alphabet has been used, but this situation is rare and unlikely.

There is a solution to USB or FireWire drive not showing in system error. However, the disconnect conflicted storage device to free up the drive letter fix may not be practicable or usable by some, such as computers which are on a network or system running data transfer activity to all its drive assignments continuously flow without stopping, and thus disconnect or reassigning any mapped drives, networked drives, removable drives or other storage drives is not an option.
In this situation, there is another workaround hack to fix the no USB or FireWire drive issue. The workaround fix relies on the registry tweak below to change the drive letter that has been previously assigned to the mounted USB or FireWire portable mobile flash or hard disk drive. Or if users wish, can opt to delete any reference to the detected drives by the device so that when the storage device is plugged in again, the whole drive letter assignment will be start from fresh, and clean.
1.Login to Windows as an Administrator.
2.Open Registry Editor by typing regedit (or regedt32.exe in older Windows prior to XP) in Run command of Start Menu and then press Enter.
3.Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
4.Optional step which not required in Windows XP or later, right click on MountedDevices, then select Permissions. You can also click Permissions from the Security menu.
5.Optional step which not required in Windows XP or later, check the option to make sure that Administrators have full control to the registry key. Change and revert back this setting when you are finished with the reset of the steps.

6.If you run above 2 steps in OS earlier than Windows XP, quit regedt32.exe and run regedit.exe.
7.Also in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices registry branch selected, in the right pane, find and locate a registry value which represents the troubled USB or FireWire drive. The registry key should have the name that resembles the format of \DosDevice\X: where X can be any alphabet letter which corresponding to your physical system drive letter.

Here?s a guidelines that you can follow to quickly determine which registry key is linked to your conflicted drive letter:
Exclude \DosDevice\A: and \DosDevice\B: which normally reserved for floppy disk drives.
Exclude \DosDevice\C: which normally is the system root drive.
If you have more than one fixed hard disk drives, then any drive letters that are using by them is not possible linked again, UNLESS the additional hard disk drive is added AFTER you first use the USB or FireWire device that now unable to show.
Same case with CD-ROM or DVD-ROM optical drive as above reasoning.
If you have inserted and mounted a lot of thumbdrives, USB flask drive, or external hard disks before, you will likely still see a lot of remaining registry values that you won?t know which is which. In this case, double click on each remaining registry key values to view its binary data. Inside the binary data, there will be trace of the name of the device that this registry key represents.

With this information, search for a registry value that contains name of your USB or FireWire drive brand and model that having problem showing up in Explorer.
8.Once the correct registry value is determined (for example, \DosDevices\F:), right click on the registry value name, and the select Rename.

9.Change the drive letter (example F) to another unused drive letter that hasn?t been used by another other drives, then press Enter.
10.Now insert and plug in the USB or FireWire device into the port again (if it?s already inserted, take it out and re-insert again). The drive letter for the USB and FireWire should now appear and you can use the drive normally and properly again.
11.For OS earlier than Windows XP which you have previously change the permissions for the registry key, quit Regedit.exe and start Regedt32.exe, and change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (which should be Read Only).
It?s also possible to simply delete the devices registry keys instead of renaming it. Deletion is helpful is users really can?t find the the registry value for the drive letter that having problem. But make sure that you do a backup for the registry branch by exporting MountedDevices key, as mistake may cause your system unbootable. The delete all possible USB drives, FireWire drives and external drives which have drive letter temporarily only when inserted in the system, and DO NOT delete any of the fixed hard disk drives or CD/DVD optical drives registry values.
Happy Computing.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

by rob miners

Click Start, right-click Network, and then click Properties.

Turn off File Shareing if it is enabled. If it isn't turn it on.

Let us know what happens.

by scourge118

Okay, I tried taking your suggestions, to no avail. I called tech support and they told me that the only thing I could do was to do a system recovery. Trying to avoid this, I looked under group policy, and there's only 4 admx files. is this normal?

by rob miners

I am running Vista Business and under C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions there are 135 .admx files. If you are talking about using the below steps to check for admx files there are no Templates loaded in my install. If they are loaded take note of their names and at your discretion remove them. Restart the PC and see what happens.

To add or remove an Administrative Template file (.admx, .adml, or .adm file)

Open the Group Policy object that you want to edit.

In the console tree, under either Computer Configuration or User Configuration, right-click Administrative Templates.

Click Add/Remove Templates.

Do one of the following:

To add a template, click Add. In the Policy Templates dialog box, click the template you want to add, and then click Open.

To remove a template, in the Current Policy Templates list, click the template, and then click Remove.

Let us know how you get on. Another consideration is a Repair/Install.

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