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Disable or enable the ability to write to a removable disk such as a flash thumb drive.

1. Click START and type REGEDIT in the Start Search Box and select REGEDIT.

2. Click the plus sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER
then SOFTWARE
then Microsoft
then Windows
then CurrentVersion
then Explorer
then Advanced

3. Double-click on EncryptionContextMenu if it exists.

If it doesn’t, right-click on ADVANCED and Select NEW–>DWORD VALUE and name it EncryptionContextMenu

4. Set this value to 1 to disable writing to a removable drive.
Set this value to 0 to enable writing to a removable drive.

The default setting is 0, but you may need to enable this value if you get the error message below.

The disk is write protected
Remove the write protection or use another disk

4 Responses to “Vista: Enable/Disable Ability to Write to Removable Disk”

  1. M$h8r says:

    “The disk is write-protected”. Completely stupid! This is a logical partition on the same internal HD on which Vista is installed.
    Mac OS (and Linux) are looking more and more attractive!

  2. aaron hughes says:

    I am having the same issues with writing to my thumb drive, it keeps reporting the disk is write-protected and I cannot save files to it

  3. Tonya says:

    How do you remove the write protection on a removable disk?

  4. Elaine Neff says:

    This help did not help. I am having trouble saving to a removeable disk. There is plenty of space but it says write protect is on. I don’t know how that happened because it worked before on this computer.

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