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Flash drives and WinXP

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by dkeith45 2 views

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I found a nice IBM Netvista 8303 (circa 2002 or so) in someones trash along side the road recently... Someone had messed with the bios and it wouldn't boot. I fussed with the bios and it boots into WinXP Home now, NP. Only problem I'm having with it is when I plug in a USB flash drive, I hear the usual "bee boop" and the task bar shows there is a USB storage device present, but it is not accessible. The 120 gig HD has two partitions, primary formatted Fat32, secondary formatted NTFS. Flash drives plugged into USB ports are recognized if they have a program present on them such as MoJoPac, U3 etc... otherwise, they are not accessible. I've never run into something like this before... anyone got a clue to how I can fix this problem? Thanks!

9 replies

by santeewelding

Why format one in Fat32, and the other in NTFS?

It's not that I know enough to ask, but, that I don't know enough to ask.

by seanferd

Since it is the primary partition which is FAT32, I'd guess that someone wanted the primary accessible to a non-NTFS OS, or that this partition originally had a non-NTFS OS on it, was upgraded to XP, but not converted to NTFS for some reason.

Perhaps the primary was even cloned to a new, larger drive, and when a second partition was added to provide access to the full drive capacity, it was allowed to be formatted as NTFS.

Odd? Yes.

by dkeith45

Yes, strange combo. Usually you find a two partition drive with NTFS on the primary, and Fat32 on the secondary holding the Restore files.

by seanferd

Not accessible how? What behavior are you expecting?

If you go into Explorer, are they there?

by dkeith45

If I go to Windows Explorer, there is no drive shown... unless as I said, the USB device has a software program such as U3, MoJoPac etc... weird 'eh?

The behavior I expect is to be able to see the USB device in Windows Explorer.

by thechas

The key is that secure drives can be accessed. Sounds to me like group policy or security settings have been set to disable USB drives that do not have security / encryption software on them. You may even find that the burning function of the CD / DVD drive has been disabled.

A growing number of companies are restricting the use of storage media to control both mal-ware and intellectual property.

As to changing the way this works, it may be easiest to format the system and start over. If it was a business system, odds are that the administrative password has been set and unless you crack that password, you will not be able to disable the USB restrictions.

Chas

by dkeith45

That very likely was the problem. I tried to do a Windows Repair, and half way through, it'd lock up every time... after several attempts, I just did a full reinstall... it works great now... no USB problems.

I've also run Ubuntu Linux on this NetVista and it works great. It's a great Linux box because of its Intel graphics, which Linux has no problems with. When I tried Linux on my main system with its Nvidia graphics, there were problems. My plan was to keep it as a Linux box, but my GF's old system needs to be retired so am going to give this box to her with WinXP on it.

by oh smeg

This very much sounds like some form of Security Setting which is set to disable USB Devices not including a Encryption Utility.

Most likely the easiest solution here is to wipe and reload the system you can use something like Boot & Nuke for IDE Drives

http://www.dban.org/

or Kill Disc for SATA Drives

http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

If you don't have a copy of XP Home you can always use any Linux and a short list is available here

http://www.livecdlist.com/

Just to rule out any Hardware issues here it would be a very good idea to use a Live Linux to test the hardware. ;)

Col

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