Web Talk

Jennifer, a great Web Talk reader, has recently contacted me to ask  how to remove a write protection message from her new memory card (sdd, mmc etc.) which doesn’t let her copy anything from  Windows 7, Vista or XP to the card. The message she gets is  the following: “Cannot copy (filename).  The Disk is write-protected. Remove the write-protection or use another disk”.  The first thing I asked her was to check the little write-protection switch located on the side of the card (it is almost invisible) and make sure it was  not set to “off”. She told me that everything was all right.  In fact, she had managed to use the card for a couple of days till, all of a sudden, the weird message started popping up on her computer. After browsing the Internet I found the following solution which worked perfectly!

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search field, type regedit and press Enter.
3. Locate the following registry folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/ System/CurrentControlSet/ Control
4. Right-click any empty space on the right pane and create a new key.
5. Name the new key StorageDevicePolicies.
6. Now,  right-click  StorageDevicePolicies (on the left) , create a new DWORD and name it WriteProtect.
7. Double-click the DWORD key and give it 0 (zero) value.
8. Restart your computer for the change to remove the write protection from your card.

If such a procedure didn’t work, keep the memory card in your card reader (if you have any), connect it to your PC and restart your computer. This will reset any previous misbehavingUSB connection.