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Windows Forum / Windows Vista / Hardware / November 2008Cannot write to drive "Media is write protected"
Hi all, This seems to be a new development, and I'm stumped. I've got three internal hard drives- one housing Vista Ultimate x64, one housing Ubuntu 8.04 x64, and one being used for storage for both OS's. Up until recently they've cooperated nicely. Now, the storage drive (drive E:\) will not let me write to it. I cannot rename, delete, cut, or write any new files to any part of that drive. That's troublesome, since that's where I send all of my downloads to! Even earlier in this session of windows it was working nicely, I was able to download a torrent of the recent Ubuntu 8.04 release (legal and distributed from ubuntu.com). I started a session of Assassin's Creed (a game), and now that I've quit that, I cannot write to the drive. Specifically, the error is: "The disk is write protected. Remove the write protection or use another disk." I've tried changing the security settings to allow USERS, or even just Administrators, full control of the drive, to no avail. I cannot modify the security settings. When I try, I get: "An error occurred while applying security information to E:\xyzpath\123filename The media is write protected." I can assure you that I've not enabled any type of write protection. Any ideas? I'd really like to have this working again as otherwise I'm extremely limited on storage space. Thanks in advance! Bogus  Signaturebogus83 Hi again. Sorry to post a question and then answer it myself, but I saw the question come up in a few other places and thought I'd post the solution I found here, in case anyone else came looking. Checkdisk did not do the trick. I had to use Diskpart. From a cmd prompt, I ran "diskpart". I selected the drive, and then the volume, then ran "Attributes volume clear readonly". Immediately I was able to set security permissions and am currently downloading my new Ubuntu disc at 900kb/s. :D Note: I have not yet rebooted, so I'm not sure if this solution will persist, or if the problem will randomly occur again. I am using SP1 also, in case anyone is interested. Signaturebogus83 Hi all. In case anyone was curious, it DID happen again, totally at random. Not sure what's causing it, but the same fix as before worked again. Signaturebogus83 Same deal here. Starting to bother me big time. I downloaded Ubuntu 8.04 release but didn't do anything with it? Just the ISO. Signaturejaxstraww > Same deal here. Starting to bother me big time. I downloaded Ubuntu 8.04 > release but didn't do anything with it? Just the ISO. I'm also having this problem. I have a partition on my hard drive that I can no longer set permissions for. How do I fix this? > Hi again. Sorry to post a question and then answer it myself, but I saw > the question come up in a few other places and thought I'd post the [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > persist, or if the problem will randomly occur again. I am using SP1 > also, in case anyone is interested. Thanks to "bogus83" for sharing the solution using diskpart. Worked like a charm. On my Vista x64 machine the problem occured after I tried to copy all files from a drive named "Medien 1" to a folder, also named "Medien 1", on a different drive. I received an error, telling me something along the lines of "the target folder is a subfolder of the source folder". After shaking my head in resignation I renamed the target folder and tried again. Seeing that the process would take longer than expected, I canceled the operation, leaving the task for the following day. When I started my computer the next day to try again, I received the mentioned error message. Coincidence? Maybe. Annoying? Definitely! I'm not sure if this will help, but I found this thread while I was searching for a solution to the "write-protected" issue, and now that it seems to be fixed I figured I'd let you know how I worked it out. The drive that gave me the message was a USB 500Gb external which I moved from my old XP box when I installed Vista HPx64 on a brand new machine. After a lot of Googling, I tried 'the diskpart method bogus83 suggested' (http://forums.techarena.in/showpost.php?p=3712616&postcount=2). It seemed to work, but just a couple of seconds later, my antivirus ('Avira AntiVir' (http://www.free-av.de/en/download/1/download_avira_antivir_personal__free_antivi rus.html) -- free and excellent) popped up a warning that it had found a boot sector virus in that drive called 'Sinowal.A' (http://blogs.technet.com/antimalware/archive/2008/01/10/mbr-rootkit-virtool-winn t-sinowal-a-report.aspx). I told it to delete the virus, but it couldn't and that's when *the AV program write-protected the drive*. Aha! I tried to get rid of the virus by following the instructions at 'this Microsoft site' (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392) and it probably would have worked except that those tools only fix the MBR on the system drive which has Vista -- not on any other drives. Then I found this tool, 'MBRFix' (http://www.sysint.no/nedlasting/mbrfix.htm) which is a 98Kb file that runs from the command line. So here's how I did it: - Download *MBRFix.exe* to your User folder - Boot the computer into a fresh session - Go to -Start | All Programs | Accessories- - Right-click on *Command Prompt* - Choose -"Run as administrator"- - Choose -"Allow"- from the UAC popup box (if you haven't turned it off) - At the *C:\Users\{your name}\>* prompt, type *MBRFix /drive {drive number} fixmbr /yes* - Repeat the command for however many drives are infected/write protected - Restart and check your antivirus or see if you are still unable to write to the drive If it was the virus, you should allow your anti-virus program and a good spyware program or two to run through a full system scan. It's been a couple of days, and (fingers crossed) it seems to be fixed! Hope this helps someone. Signatureevano http://forums.techarena.in Hi, same problem here... I performed the "diskpart" solution from bogus83, but after the restart, grub did not get past stage 1.5 (seems to be in a loop, as no error message). Anyone an idea of what has gone wrong? I did run a virus-check (Norton 360) before restarting, and no problems were found. My configuration is: Ubuntu 8.04 on 250GB Maxtor (grub installed here) Vista Ultimate X64 on (Software) Raid 0 (2 x WD Raptor 37GB) Asus P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi Intel E6600 Signaturejukka77 I (think) I have solved my issue: after having restored my MBR using the Vista DVD, I updated the jmicron (SATA/RAID controller drivers), and so far have not seen the problem return. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that was the cause... Signaturejukka77 I have similar issue. 2 harddrives, Vista 64 is on 2nd, Windows XP on 1st. And No any RAID, also updated drivers. Nothing helps - it occurs time ti time, and reboot always helps. I searched with google, it turned out that many people complain about it and they all have different configuration, so there is no any pattern (except 2 or more HDs). So it is Vista bug and any remedy is temporary until MS fix it... > I (think) I have solved my issue: > after having restored my MBR using the Vista DVD, I updated the jmicron > (SATA/RAID controller drivers), and so far have not seen the problem > return. > > I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that was the cause... Hi, for me the problem reappeared a few days after I had updated my SATA/RAID controller drivers. So that wasn't it. Instead I connected the drive onto a different SATA controller (that was about a week ago), and it* seems *as if that has solved it for me. No idea why, though... Signaturejukka77 I was having this same issue when I was using Windows XP x64 and I'm having it now with Windows Vista Ultimate x64. I have six internal hard drives and seven external hard drives and it seems like in my testing that the last one or two drives that show up in the OS are the ones that invariably come up write-protected. I'm pretty sure its a 64-bit bug. Does anyone have a solution yet? I'm seriously considering writing a script to run on login that will automatically remove the write protection. This is driving me insane not to mention causing me to have to unplug and replug my drives unnecessarily to get them usable again. Is Microsoft listening? Hello, is this thin on? Signaturepsychosmurf If you have drives that are encrypted with PGP and the show up write-protected; don't try the diskpart trick. it'll only make the drive completely unmountable. I found that out the hard way; was able to recover the data but it cost me two days of decryption. Signaturepsychosmurf > If you have drives that are encrypted with PGP and the show up > write-protected; don't try the diskpart trick. it'll only make the > drive completely unmountable. I found that out the hard way; was able > to recover the data but it cost me two days of decryption. I have exact same problem with Vista x64 Ultimate but it only occurs in those hard disk partitions wich i have partitioned with vistas own disk management, my other hard disk is partittioned with winxp disk management and does not have that problem. Jape;949598 Wrote: > I have exact same problem with Vista x64 Ultimate but it only occurs in > those hard disk partitions wich i have partitioned with vistas own disk > management, my other hard disk is partittioned with winxp disk > management and does not have that problem. That's very interesting. It almost seems like this is occurring randomly to many different people with different configurations. All of my drives that are hitting this were partitioned and formatted in Windows XP and are external. The only drive I have that was created by Vista is the drive Vista is installed on; all the rest are leftovers from my XP x64 days, which of course had exactly the same problem. I really hope they fix this soon; its so frustrating not being able to use one or two (and yesterday is was three) hard drives because they are showing write-protected after every single reboot and not being able to encrypt the data on the drive for fear of losing it at the next reboot. Signaturepsychosmurf I'm getting the same issue with an internal HD that I use for data storage. There must be some kind of definitive fix for this. :( Signaturerumjungle Basicly what I did with my 3 external drives was to go to: This computer Locate the drive Right click - Properties Security In the lower right, choose Advanced Lower Left, choose Edit Now here was my problem. Having put the files there on one computer that crashed alot then moving it to my new computer, I had some weird owerships and inheritatits from the old computer. What I basicly did, was to remove ALL of the permissions then adding <My user name> and, System, and Administrator. You can also add Users and Authenticated Users (look up the names on your main drive that always works). It took a while for the disk to set the permissions to all folders/subfolders and so on, but now everything works like a charm. Could be worth a try. PS. Also works after reboot :) SignatureJohan ALfort http://forums.techarena.in Thanks, Johan, I'll give this a try and see what happens. I hope something works as this is driving me nuts. Signaturepsychosmurf YIKES!! I think you might have found the solution, Johan. It took me a good five hours to reset the security on all my files but I've rebooted three times now and still no read-only drives. I still want to get a few more reboots in before I get to optimistic but so far things look great!!!! Signaturepsychosmurf Now Vista seems to be write protecting the media on whims. I haven't rebooted in four days and a drive that was fine yesterday is now write-protected. What a pain in the a.s. MICROSOFT ARE YOU THERE!?!?!?! HELLLLLLLO THIS IS A PROBLEM, PLEASE FIX IT! Signaturepsychosmurf Well, so it still writes protects the disc sometimes, but unlike before I find that now all I need to do is unplug the power so the harddrive "reboots" and then it works again. It's atleast better than before but it's still not 100% Also, the time it writes protects is after and only after a computer crash. Might infact be the drive itself that writeprotects itself if it notice a system failure, in that case...thats good news :) Hope this works for you also psychosmurf! SignatureJohan ALfort http://forums.techarena.in Johan ALfort;88148 Wrote: > ... > What I basicly did, was to remove ALL of the permissions then adding [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > PS. Also works after reboot :) I have the same hell of a problem and wanted to try your approach Johan. But I actually can't because when I try to click "OK" or "Apply" after removing the old and adding the new permission entries it starts but immediatelly gets this error: "An error occurred while applying security information to: Z:\PATH\TO\SOME\FILE\_\I\THINK\FIRST\ONE The media is write protected." So it looks like I have to possibility at all to change my permissions. Perhaps it works under XP on my Laptop to unset the write-protection. Or any other suggestions?! :( Signatureichbinder I've reinstalled and I've fixed drivers and all so the system is more stable and so far I haven't had any problems with the disks for months now. Ichbinder: Sorry to say that I don't have any more suggetions. Do you have admin account and all that? If yes then I don't know what it is. This seems to be more than one problem and it doesn't seem like anyone out there is listening to it. I hope you guys find solutions for the problem. You should talk to the manufacturers of the harddrives and see if you can get it replaced cause in my opinion this is not a working harddrive. Good luck out there, If I stumble upon something, I'll post it here! SignatureJohan ALfort http://forums.techarena.in rumjungle;811312 Wrote: > I'm getting the same issue with an internal HD that I use for data > storage. There must be some kind of definitive fix for this. Same problem here, caused by changing SATA ports....or what is it something else?! SignaturexGo i have had this problem for some time now as well. i have an 80G hard drive that was removed from a notebook and the hard drive was installed in an enclosure. i would use the drive between two computers, sometimes three: 1 vista home premium x64, 1 vista home premium x86, and 1 vista business (mostly between the two vista home premium computers, as both of those are mine). anyway, the hard drive would work with the notebook (x86) and when i would attach it to the desktop (x64) i would get the write protected error. i got it to work before by right clicking the drive icon in my computer and going to the security tab. i would then enable the permissions. then it would work fine. strange thing happened this morning though--when i went to enable permissions (because lo and behold, i got the write protection error again this morning!), all of the permissions were enabled. so, i went to device manager, selected the disk, and uninstalled it. after uninstalling it, i detached the drive from my computer, waited a few seconds, then reattached the drive. the computer had to reinstall the driver software and everything worked fine--i was able to delete from and copy to the drive with no problem. i just hope that it stays right. Signaturempcrsc562 @Johan ALfort: thanks for your attention and suggestions but I don't think that this is a problem of the hard disks themselves but a drivers or windows vista problem... And yeah, I have admin account but the problem seams to be some kind of deadlock or so... weirdo stuff?! I just can approve to what mpcrsc562 describes: the hard drives I use are protected by truecrypt so I have to mount them by select a drive in truecrypt and then type in my password... so, the (not really) funny thing is now: sometimes a drive is write protected and I can't change the properties of the disk to make it writeable and sometimes it just works very well and I can create, modify and delete files... Signatureichbinder Hi, I have the same problem. Suddenly, unable to create files or directories on my data-disk that's in RAID 1. Security-settings were OK but I even couldn't make changes to the security-settings :confused:. The only thing that changed since yesterday : a windows update that was pending for more then a week. So I did a system restore to yesterday and now the disk is writable again. I'm not sure which update causes this problem, but I will give you the list of updates that were installed yesterday : - Windows Vista ------------------------------------------------------- - Cumulative Security Update for ActiveX Killbits for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB956391) - Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB956390) - Security Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB954211) - Security Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB956841) - Security Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB957095) - Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool x64 - October 2008 (KB890830) - Cumulative Update for Media Center for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB955519) - Update for Windows Mail Junk E-mail Filter for x64-based Systems [October 2008] (KB905866) - Office 2007 ------------------------------------------------------- - Security Update for 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB955936) - Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB955470) - Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Junk Email Filter (KB957258) Could it be an update of this list that causes the write-protection? SignatureFrostikkel Hi all. I found this thread thanks to Google. I've got two internal harddrives, one 640GB WD SE16 (C:) and one 500GB Samsung T166 (D:). They're hooked up the AMD SB600 southbridge and I've got the AMD AHCI driver version 3.1.1540.11. I've also got an external 500GB drive that I only connect when performing backups or restoring data. I was running XP 32-bit, then Vista 32-bit without issues. After having switched to Vista 64-bit, my D drive will now randomly become write protected. All the fixes I've tried so far only have a temporary effect. The disk always eventually write protects itself again, sometimes within minutes, sometimes after several days. This is crazy! I don't know if this is a bug with Vista 64-bit or if the actual upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit caused the issue. I've done the ownership thing, the MBRFix, the diskpart bit etc. I've also checked for viruses. SignatureJimmiG http://forums.techarena.in Today, I installed the pending updates again to see that they where the cause of the problem. But now seems everything OK.. Guess it wasn't an automatic update .. SignatureFrostikkel I think I've fixed the problem. I tried all the AMD AHCI drivers I could find: 2.5.1540.35 and .39 (latest Asus driver I believe) both fail to keep the drive write enabled, as does 3.1.1540.11 (SB7xx driver). Version 2.5.1540.43, which for some reason is the latest SB600 driver available at AMD's own homepage also fails. I did not try 3.1.1540.50 which is the latest SB7xx driver, since it's not really meant for my SB600 southbridge. However build 2.5.1540.48 available from the MSI K9A2 download page seem to work. After installing them and rebooting, neither harddrive has showed up as "Read Only" for days. I've got an Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe mobo, but the AHCI driver works with any brand. So in my case it wasn't a security or permissions problem, but rather an AHCI driver problem. It seems most 64-bit versions of AMD's AHCI drivers fool Vista into thinking the harddrive is physically write protected. So if you've got an AMD board and experience this problem, there's a possible solution. SignatureJimmiG http://forums.techarena.in Hello Microsoft?????? Seems this issue is growing rapidly. It is rather annoying enough to rid myself of vista 64bit entirely. An alternative OS other than MS is looking tempting. Fix it FFS! >Hello Microsoft?????? > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > >Fix it FFS! This is a P2P group, bozo. It's not a group that is officially monitored by MS. Grow one and bite it Deet. You haven't changed a bit fool. > >Hello Microsoft?????? > > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > This is a P2P group, bozo. It's not a group that is officially > monitored by MS. But then he is right !!! If you have a question related to a problem post and ask here someone in the public domain will answer...not someone from MS If you just come here to bitch...do it but don’t expect a civil answer from some of the kiddies here peter SignatureDISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it. If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-) > Grow one and bite it Deet. You haven't changed a bit fool. > [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >> This is a P2P group, bozo. It's not a group that is officially >> monitored by MS. I (think) I have fixed the problem on my Vista Ultimate x64 machine. I had tried all the suggestions that had been discussed but without any success. The drive that was giving me the problem was 800GB Raid-0 with JMicron JMB36X drivers. In desperation, I just *re-formatted* the drive from the Disk Management panel. A week later and the drive is still behaving as it should. Previously, the problem would re-appear within hours after using other methods. I hope this helps, David SignatureDavid Longmuir http://forums.techarena.in David Longmuir;4067019 Wrote: > I (think) I have fixed the problem on my Vista Ultimate x64 machine. I > had tried all the suggestions that had been discussed but without any [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > David Update: The problem re-appeared after i had installe Maxifier (http://www.mods.com.au/maxifier/) and DriveHQ Back-up (http://www.drivehq.com/). But I'm fairly certain that Maxifier is the culprit. It's a utility that puts Windows Media Centre on the secondary monitor on a dual-display system. Surely this can't be a display driver thing? I'm running an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1500. Best wishes, David SignatureDavid Longmuir http://forums.techarena.in David Longmuir;4069646 Wrote: > Update: > > But I'm fairly certain that Maxifier is the culprit. No, it's DriveHQ Backup. Presumably as a result of accessing the drive in the course of its backup routine. SignatureDavid Longmuir http://forums.techarena.in Okay, My drive was locked again.. So I start digging the web for solutions and causes.. I've found a solution and maybe a cause.. :) Someone who's using 2008 enterprise terminal server, had the same problem. ('original article' (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverfiles/thread/7859d8c0- 7438-4836-8408-a0c550c8ba0a/)) With the program diskpart.exe, you have to reset the read-only flag of your disk or volume. In my case, it was the volume that was flagged read-only. The detail-list gave no indication that it was flagged read-only, but executing the command for resetting it, solved the problem. The cause of all this troubles could be some backup-software that locks the harddrive. I'm using Acronis True Image 11. Anyone else does? SignatureFrostikkel |
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