USB issues

[DWL]

Hello all,
Strange one here, if this is in the wrong forum, please let me know where to
post.
I have a pc running XP Pro + SP2 on a NT4 domain.
The user is a general (basic) user on the domain with no special privileges
and also is defined as an administrator on the local machine.
If he plugs in a digital camera, nothing happens and the camera's software
does not "see" it. If you look in Windows Explorer or My Computer, you cannot
see it there either.
If you log out and log in as administrator (either on the domain or the
local computer) you can see it just fine in Windows Explorer and My Computer.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Hello all,
Strange one here, if this is in the wrong forum, please let me know
where to post.
I have a pc running XP Pro + SP2 on a NT4 domain.
The user is a general (basic) user on the domain with no special
privileges and also is defined as an administrator on the local
machine.
If he plugs in a digital camera, nothing happens and the camera's
software does not "see" it. If you look in Windows Explorer or My
Computer, you cannot see it there either.
If you log out and log in as administrator (either on the domain or
the local computer) you can see it just fine in Windows Explorer and
My Computer.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

As the user, connect it, open disk management, and see if it shows up
there - could be a drive letter issue (removable drives don't "see" mapped
drive letters in use).

 

[John B]

Interesting! So that's a conflict caveat, then.

I recall that an explicit drive letter mapping (i.e., from a cmd window,
"net use t: \\computername\sharename") holds, in XP, only for the user that
installed said mapping. IOW, if I log on at that same computer as a
different user, the mapping will NOT be present unless I perform the same
explicit mapping again, while logged on as that second user.

This implies that the low-ranking user might have employed such a mapping,
while the adminstrator did not.

Thus the low-ranking user runs into conflict, while the administrator does
not.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Interesting! So that's a conflict caveat, then.

I recall that an explicit drive letter mapping (i.e., from a cmd
window, "net use t: \\computername\sharename") holds, in XP, only for
the user that installed said mapping. IOW, if I log on at that same
computer as a different user, the mapping will NOT be present unless
I perform the same explicit mapping again, while logged on as that
second user.
Yep.

This implies that the low-ranking user might have employed such a
mapping, while the adminstrator did not.
Yep.

Thus the low-ranking user runs into conflict, while the administrator
does not.
Yep.

You might check out http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html - USBDLM. I have
it set up in a number of places, and assign drive letter U to any USB
attached device. If you think your users will have more than one connected
at the time, you won't want to limit it that way, of course.