Need immediate assistance with protected USB. Please respond right away.
Need immediate assistance with protected USB. Please respond right away.
You might want to experiment with DD, entering commands like "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/XXX" and swapping in the USB drive name. You can also run "sudo fdisk -l" to locate your USB stick, which would look similar to "/dev/sdb".
HDD LLF is available at hddguru.com. When formatting issues arise, especially with Windows warning it's protected, a Low Level Format can help. It has previously fixed several USB drives for users.
START WITH THE COMMAND LINE. I'M NOT TECHNICAL, SO I'LL SIMPLIFY. I WILL USE CAPS FOR THE KEY STEPS. OPEN AN ELEVATED CMD PROMPT BY TYPING "CMD" IN THE START MENU AND RIGHT-CLICKING ON "COMMAND PROMPT" TO RUN AS ADMIN. WHEN THE PROMPT SHOWS UP, TYPE DISKPART AND PRESS ENTER. WAIT FOR DISKPART TO BEGIN. THEN USE LIST DISK TO SEE YOUR USB STICK IN THE LIST. REMEMBER THE DISK NUMBER (0, 1, 2, etc.). BE CAREFUL, AS MISTAKING IT COULD CAUSE PROBLEMS. SELECT THE DISK BY TYPING SELECT DISK # WITH THE NUMBER YOU FOUND AND PRESS ENTER. AFTER SELECTION, TYPE ATTRIBUTES DISK AND ENTER. THIS WILL SHOW DETAILS ABOUT THE STICK. CHECK THE CURRENT READ-ONLY STATE. IF IT SAYS "YES", TYPE ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY AND PRESS ENTER AGAIN. IF NOT, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO NEXT.
Okay, did it and the results; when I do ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY I get an answer in CMD saying Disk attributes cleared succesfully but my flash drive remains read only. Heh,
The linked application is not functioning properly. It displays numerous "The media is write protected errors" messages.
If the low-level format didn't work, it's a total loss, throw it away and try again.
It doesn't matter about ownership since the system removes the drive before formatting. I've read some ideas suggesting a specific failure might trap the flash ROM in write mode, making it appear write-protected. This seems like a typical problem with flash drives—search for "write protected flash drive" and see what you find.