[DougBR]

Hi,

When I try to access any removable storage device (DVD, pendrive, memory stick using a flash card reader) on my Windows Vista Business, I always get a "access is denied" message. And now all the removable devices listed on Windows have a red "not allowed" symbol (as you can see here: http://img477.imageshack.us/img477/8504/problemadc4.jpg )

I believe the problem started when Windows froze while the computer was reading a memory stick, so I had to reboot it using directly the power button. Before that, everything was working fine (and they're still working under Linux).

I have already tried to reinstall both the flash card reader and the dvd drive, and it didn't help. I did a chkdsk too. My guess is that it has something to do with the removable storage manager or something like that.

Any help would be appreciated.

[downtime]

On the keyboard, press the windows key + r, in the run box, type gpedit.msc, click ok, expand Administrative Templates, System, Removable Storage Access. Check if any policies are configured. Under CD and DVD: Deny Read Access, and : Deny Write Access, try disabling them. Reboot any see if access is allowed now to the DVD drive.

[DougBR]

Hi, thanks for your reply, but that didn't work. All policies were "not configured", so I tried disabling them all, but still didn't work.

Any other idea?

Edit: Nevermind, I manage to solve this. The problem was Acer Empowering Tools. I just uninstall everything and remove all entries form the reg and voila, the drive worked.

[alexkink]

Just for those who might have similar problems, here is a very common reason and fix:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/com...g=en&cr=US&p=1