Vista: Enable/Disable Ability to Write to Removable Disk

Disable or enable the ability to write to a removable disk such as a flash thumb drive.

1. Click START and type REGEDIT in the Start Search Box and select REGEDIT.

2. Click the plus sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER

then SOFTWARE
then Microsoft
then Windows
then CurrentVersion
then Explorer
then Advanced

3. Double-click on EncryptionContextMenu if it exists.

If it doesn’t, right-click on ADVANCED and Select NEW–>DWORD VALUE and name it EncryptionContextMenu

4. Set this value to 1 to disable writing to a removable drive.
Set this value to 0 to enable writing to a removable drive.

The default setting is 0, but you may need to enable this value if you get the error message below.

The disk is write protectedRemove the write protection or use another disk