My 16 GB USB flash drive has developed an odd problem. It appears to have
become 'write protected' all on its own. It doesn't have a switch anywhere
before everyone jumps on their keyboards ...

I have tried everything to mount the bloody thing and force a reformat, but
to no avail. Looking on the net, there are lots of references to the
problem, and even a little software utility that lots of posters have tried,
and had success with. I downloaded it and tried it, but nope - problem
persists. I've tried it with a Win 7 64 bit machine, and an XP Pro machine,
but same result. Windows format utilities have no success either. Nor
low-level attempts in command prompt, including with the /U switch added.
There are also instructions to change a registry entry to switch off write
protect. I also tried doing this, but it still stubbornly reports that it is
write protected, and any attempt to do anything just throws up an error,
citing this as the cause. The format utility on the XP machine did get into
the problem a bit deeper by saying that the current file format was "RAW"
and that it wanted to change that to "FAT32", which I OK'd. It then went
ahead and produced the progress bar which lasted for a couple of minutes. I
thought at that point that I'd cracked it, but no. The progress bar got to
the end, then up came the error message that Windows was unable to complete
the format operation because the target device was write protected. DOH !
:-(

So, any of the computer gurus out there got any ideas of other ways to fix
it ? Any free formatting utilities out there that will mount and format a
flash drive regardless ? Any idea how this occurred in the first place ? The
last known operation was that the wife put an AVI on there from her Vista
laptop, but the file itself is ok and virus free, and its something that she
does all the time. I know I could just go out and buy a replacement, but
it's like an old friend - and shaped like a .50 caliber bullet :-) - so it
would be nice to give it its life back ...

Arfa