Assume you have done all the steps listed below. I think you did. *Flipping a switch - there is no switch on my flash drive. *Formatting the flash drive - I get the "The disk is write protected." error whenever I try this. *Checking the flash drive for errors - I get the "The disk is write protected." error. *Going into my flash drives properties and turning off write protection - write protection does not show up under my *flash drives properties. *Going into regedit, finding my StorageDevicePolicies, and setting WriteProtect to 0 - regedit claims WriteProtect is already set to 0. *cmd prompt: diskpart- list disk - select disk 1 - attributes disk clear readonly - I get the message "Disk attributes cleared successfully." However, nothing happens; I still get the error "The disk is write protected." whenever I try to do anything. *cmd prompt: diskpart - list disk - select disk 1 - clean - "DiskPart has encountered an error: The media is write protected." *Using the "Usb Format.exe" - it can't find my flash drive. *Using HDDGuru to do a low level format - I get a bunch of errors like "1/31/2013 9:37:03 PM Format Error occurred at offset 159,318,016: 19 - The media is write protected". *Trying to test with H2testw 1.4 - I get "The media is write protected. Code 19" *HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.2.3 - I get "Device Media is write-protected". FRee Formater sillicon The link below is the only one I have seen that showed HOW to see if the drive were set to Read Only. And a tool you have not used. Also the idea that the firmware maybe the culprit and cannot be fixed easily at all. Oh and one last thing I did come across. If it is a major brand Usb stick and not some stick that comes with a computer with the O/S on it then contacting the Usb stick manufacturer can often uncover a special tool for doing the format. But it is usually manufacturer specific.
