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Restriction Warning "...prohibited access to CD/DVD ROM Drives" 2

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yalamo

yalamo

Technical User
Sep 22, 2002
244
IL
I have a Win XP Home SP3 system. Starting yesterday (I've had the PC for over 4 years) every time I turn the PC on, I get a warning "Administrator has prohibited access to CD/DVD ROM drives." Also, if I try an external USB drive, I get the same sort of warning about the USB drives. I'm the only one that uses the PC, so I'm the administrator (and I never prohibited access).

I googled this warning phrase, and found a number of "solutions", none of which seemed definitive. I have the Intel Desktop Utilities mentioned in a couple of them (and they sometimes are useful), so before I uninstall that, or edit my registry, or do something drastic, I thought I would ask your advice.

Another thing -the PC seems to hang up now when I shut it off.
 
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BadBigBen, thanks. Looking at the MS support link, using the Group Policy Editors looks pretty cumbersome. But I see that MS states that it applies to XP professional, not to XP home, which, as I posted, is what I have. I do not have "Group Policy" under "Available Stand Alone Snap-ins" when I open mmc, so I can't go down this road any more.

Any other suggestions?
 
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oops, my bad, I had not noticed that it was the HOME Edition...

take a look at the following and see if it is implemented:

Disable access to removable storage media:

Now users are giving importance to storage gadgets. Many tiny gadgets like thumb Drives, and a vide range of memory cards are available in the market using with data can be copied very easily and fastly, which can be a disadvantage.

Now, a new feature has been added to Windows XP SP 2, which will prevent the write operations to USB block storage devices, such as memory sticks. When this option is enabled, the devices function only as read-only devices. To enable this option, modify the following registry entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\

Double-click "StorageDevicePolicies" and change the DWord value to 1.

0 - Disabled
1 - Enabled
Click to expand...
Source: TechNet Support webcast: Make your Windows XP PC more secured

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"
 
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BadBigBen, thanks again. However, I don't want my USB drives to function as read-only devices, since this would negate one of their main purposes,which is to act as backup (my external hard disk). Any other suggestions?
 
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Do you have a registry string AllocateDASD at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon?
If so, what is it's value?
 
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smah, I'm not used to workng with the registry, but I found under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/SeCEdit/RegValues/Machine/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/WinLogon/AllocateDASD, in the right hand pane of REGEDIT there is a value type with a data value of 1.

But then, just to confuse me, I also found under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/WinLogon, in the right hand pane of REGEDIT allocatedasd of type REG_SZ and data 0. Is this what you're referring to? What do I do with it?
 
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The first, at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/SeCEdit/RegValues/Machine/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/WinLogon/AllocateDASD is required, don't touch it.

I believe the second one (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/WinLogon) is the one that's causing your problem. Right-click & export it to your desktop, just to be safe. You could re-import it if I'm wrong. Then you can delete that REG_SZ entirely (or change its value to 2 for testing, but for the long term, delete it).

HKLM is shorthand (and the format used by reg.exe) for HKey_Local_Machine
 
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smah, thanks, but it didn't work. I deleted the allocatedasd REG_SZ entirely, as you suggested, and rebooted. I still got the same restriction warning, and still can't get to my CD/DVD and USB drives. The deleted registry string is not in the registry (I checked).

What now? Should I reimport the string into the registry?
Would it help to do a system restore to a date a few days ago, before all this trouble began? Except maybe for a Windows Defender update a few days ago, I haven't installed anything new in my system.
 
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If it didn't resolve the problem, you should re-import the registry value. (Did you try changing it to 2?)

I suppose the next prudent course of action would be a system restore.
 
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Well, I tried System Restore, back to August 17, when I didn't have the problem, but that didn't help.
The registry value returned when I did the system restore. Is there any point in changing its value? I haven't tried that yet.
Any other suggestions? I've thought of uninstalling Intel Desktop Utilities (some of the links I've googled mentioned that) but I find that pretty drastic (I use it to monitor processor and mb temperatures, and fan speed), since once it's removed, I'm not sure I'll be able to reinstall it.
 
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Well, I finally uninstalled Intel Desktop Utilities, and rebooted, and that annoying restriction warning was gone! My USB drives worked, including my external hard disk that I use for backup, which was very important to me.

However, my CD and DVD drives still won't work, but that may be a different problem - I really haven't used them for some time, and it's possible that they've gone bad, I will have to look into it further.

In any case, I'd like to thank BigBadBen and smah for their help and support.
 
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Hey everybody.... seems I'm having the same dang problem. Suddenly after years of having the Intel Desktop Utilities work fine, today I start my computer only to see the same restriction warning as described above.

"Administrator has prohibited access to CD/DVD ROM drives."

Well fortunately it didn't hinder my work today.... that's until this afternoon when I turned on my external hard drive for it's weekly full backup. Well I also received this message: "Administrator has restricted this computer to access USB/1394 mass storage devices"

Anyway, I haven't made any real effort to correct this yet other than going through amin. tools/ Local Security Policy/ Security Options and checking the devices to make sure both CD and Floppy are set to "disabled" as they should be.

I do believe this is directly related to the trial software from AdminWorks Management Suite that comes bundled with the Intel Desktop Utilities.

Odd thing is I never installed or ran that junk.

I Googled this and obviously ended up here.... but seen where this problem was reported as far back as 2006 yet no real solutions from either Intel or AdminWorks! Go figure...

So if anyone else can offer up solutions other that removing the Intel program I'd surely love to hear about it not to mention from others who have experienced this same dilemma.

BTW.... I'm running XP Pro w/SP3 on a Intel D915PBL board w/P4 3.2GHz LGA775 Intel processer. She's an oldie but given great service.

Thanks in advance.... strat55
 
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Well, I just wanted to follow up on this..... I ended up having to remove the Intel Desktop Utilities! Go figure. So here's the only "lingering problem" I seem to have.

Now I have no icons for my 3 1/2 floppy or my CD and DVD drives. I must be missing something, but I've tried everything to get them back with no success. (shy of a XP reinstall) I also searched Microsoft and came up empty on this one.

If anyone has a simple way of restoring these icons I'd surely appreciate the help and direction. Oh, and everything works fine.... just no icons. Thanks!
 
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Icons - Change (To change the icon used for specific drives in Explorer) Start/Run/ Regedit

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer

Create a key called DriveIcons. Within DriveIcons, create another key with the drive letter you want to change (..\DriveIcons\K). Create another key within the drive letter key called DefaultIcon. Set the default value equal to the icon you want to use. If you have a file that has more than one icon in it, such as a DLL file, use the standard C:\full_path\icon_file.dll,x <file:///C:/full_path/icon_file.dll,x>) where x is the number of the icon within the file icon_file.dll.

You can change a hard drive's icon in any 32-bit Windows platform by including a valid Autorun.inf file in that drive's root directory. Windows Desktop Update presents another way to change a hard drive's icon. To change the icon for drive C:, insert the name and (optional) icon index number of a valid icon file as the (Default) value for this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\driveicons\C\DefaultIcon. Replace C with a different letter to change another drive's icon.
Click to expand...
Source: Windows XP From A to Z = Kelly's Corner

Icons - Shell32: %SystemRoot%\System32\shell32.dll (IT Library)

11 is the CD-ROM drive

Alternative to the above try:

Set the theme to CLASSIC, then power down, reboot and reset the theme back to what it was...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"
 
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