New USB storage devices not getting detected in Windows XP

[sujk2k]

Hi there,

I have a strange problem with my machine at work.
Suddenly, it has stopped detecting all the USB storage devices attached to usb ports.
As I figured it out, according to my new company policy ;-), admins blocked them from registry via group policy settings and by disabling the removable storage service.
I undo the changes and now I can access my previous usb disks, which I used successfully on this machine before.

But, when I connect a new Western Digital disk, it does not detect it as a USB Mass storage device and instead detects it as "External HDD" and asks for drivers, which is wrong.
In short, the machine is now not accepting any new USB storage devices as usb disks :-(
I strongly suspect that this is a part of USB group policy applied to the machine as the same disk is working perfectly on the machine which is not in the work domain.

I tried giving exclusive rights to usb related files in Windows\inf folder, but in vain.
Could not find anything about this problem on internet.

Please help me in this case.
Thanks in advance.

[lurk]

Ask your "company" if they could allow it for you.

[sujk2k]

Ask your "company" if they could allow it for you.

Thanks. But that is not possible :-)
That's why I posted the question.

[jermaghs07]

well the only way you are going to access it is if the give you permission to. sorry. unless you can get access to admin rights.

[sujk2k]

Hi,

I have the admin rights.
U have any further tricks other than follows:

1. Start the Removable storage service (it was stopped)
2. Registry - in HKLM\Serives, set Start=3 for USBSTOR. (it was 4 before)
3. Give security rights explicitly to my username for usb related files in windows\inf folder and remove ReadOnly attribute.

With above tricks, I managed to run my previously connected usb disks only. New ones still not working (detected as 'External HDD instead of removable mass storage driver)

Any help is highly appriciated.
Thanks.