Cannot write to USB drive

[Guest]

A few of our desktops/notebooks in our environment running XP Pro SP2 or 2K
Pro SP4 have problems with writing to USB flash ram. The contents can be read
though. The same stick works fine (can read/write) on other machines.

Any ideas?

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Are the PCs that can not write to the USB drives using "administrator" type
accounts? You can set Windows 2K and XP to not allow "write" to devices.

 

[Guest]

Yes. The users logged on as their own domain user account, which belongs to
the local admin group of their own desktop/notebook. Not a good practice but
a few apps refuse to work without making them local admin.

The problem seems depend on which USB port or device is in use. E.g.

- In one instance, on the W2K SP4 notebook, cannot write to (but can read
from) a SANDisk USB Flash 128MB if it attaches to a particular USB port.
Read/write is fine after moving the stick to another USB port.

- In another instance, this time on an XP SP2 desktop, the same port can
write from one brand of SD card reader but not another brand. Read is fine in
both cases.