Sorry, this is waaaaaaaaaaay off-topic, but I wondered if any of the USB experts might happen to know:
I was at the UK Embedded Systems Show the other day, and got a free USB stick from Farnell. When plugged-in, this shows up as two drives: 1. A CD-ROM drive, which has an auto-play promotional movie on it; 2. A "normal" USB drive.
The trouble is, every time you plug it in, it tries to play the movie again!
:-(
Win-XP says the CD-ROM part is read-only, so won't let me delete the files or format it.
So, is there any way to get rid of this movie? Or do I just junk the whole stick?
Perhaps this, but I have not tried it:
www.windowsnetworking.com/.../DisableCDautoplayinWindowsXPPro.html
Yes, that'd do it; but I was looking more for ways to get it off the stick - if that's possible?
Whenever I have to do low level access of memory sticks, SD cards etc, I always use xways winhex. With that, you can easily access the drive at the sector level and erase them.
Might be worth a try.
The problem isn't the USB stick, it's that the Autorun feature of Windows is enabled for this type of drive. Or, as I'd put it personally, the problem is that Windows actually has an Autorun feature.
My (drastic) solution is to use regedit to search the registry for all instances of NoDriveTypeAutorun and set the value of each occurrent to 0x255 to get rid of Windows trying to run files, play movies, etc, without being explicitly told to do so.
If you value the Autorun feature, I would recommend a more surgical approach. Microsoft probably has an explanation somewhere on their website what the bits of NoDriveTypeAutorun stand for, and how to disable Autorun for the type of drive only.
Or, as I'd put it personally, the problem is that Windows actually has an Autorun feature.
(I consider this an intentional defect in the product). ;)
Erm, no. The problem is not the content of the writable drive part, but the existence and content of the read-only part. If the memory is described to the OS as a ROM drive, no amount of hex-editing will write to it.
The simple method to avoid the auto-start nuisance is to hold down the Shift key while the drive is mounted.
Yes, that is exactly it!
I know that there are ways & means to stop the Auto-Run, but that is just a symptom - the real problem is the fact that there is this 2nd "drive".
So, is there any way to reconfigure this as a single "drive" ?
No practical one, I'm sure.
If you have the applicable tools, it might be entertaining and/or educational to hack the device, replacing the firmware with a straightforward USB memory stick implementation. But in terms of return on investment, it'd be an almost certain desaster.
"If the memory is described to the OS as a ROM drive, no amount of hex-editing will write to it."
Actually, that is why I suggested winhex. In effect, it bypasses the OS and allows direct writing to the device. A read only file is described to the OS as read only, but you can still manipulate it.
But ... I guess if the device really does have a read only partition, I guess you're options are really limited.
Do you have any tools that can rewrite the MBR and the Partition Table?
Is it likely that this is being done in the MBR and/or Partition table, or is it the device firmware that is enumerating on the USB as two separate "drives"...?
I have looked at it with the Win-XP disk management tools, and that shows it as two completely separate devices - not one device with 2 partitions: The 'Delete Partition' option is greyed-out on both devices; The 'Format' option is greyed-out on the devices that appears as a CD-ROM (it is formatted as "CDFS").
Definitely - it's only a 512MB stick!
The partition tools provided by Microsoft are not good. I think that, it is because Microsoft wants to protect its OS. You need to find a good partition tool to erase the CDFS.
Can't find any good links for you, But you can try the keywords "Remove CDFS".
The below link says:
I had the same problem, I used Gparted on a Linux Live CD. I used Puppy Linux and re-formatted both to FAT32 so I have 2 partitions to use now.
www.pcadvisor.co.uk/.../index.cfm
In my experiances, most Linux distributions provide good partition tools.
For Windows Environment, you can try SPFDisk.
spfdisk.sourceforge.net/
It is designed by a Taiwanese engineer, not easy to find a good English Documentation.
Before messing with searching for Partition-management tools, the basic question needs to be answered: "Is it likely that this is being done in the MBR and/or Partition table?"
If it isn't a "Partition" - but a firmware thing - then no Partition-management tools are going to help!