Sorry, this is waaaaaaaaaaay off-topic, but I wondered if any of the USB experts might happen to know:
I was at the UK Embedded Systems Show the other day, and got a free USB stick from Farnell. When plugged-in, this shows up as two drives: 1. A CD-ROM drive, which has an auto-play promotional movie on it; 2. A "normal" USB drive.
The trouble is, every time you plug it in, it tries to play the movie again!
:-(
Win-XP says the CD-ROM part is read-only, so won't let me delete the files or format it.
So, is there any way to get rid of this movie? Or do I just junk the whole stick?
Might be worth a try.
Erm, no. The problem is not the content of the writable drive part, but the existence and content of the read-only part. If the memory is described to the OS as a ROM drive, no amount of hex-editing will write to it.
The simple method to avoid the auto-start nuisance is to hold down the Shift key while the drive is mounted.
Yes, that is exactly it!
I know that there are ways & means to stop the Auto-Run, but that is just a symptom - the real problem is the fact that there is this 2nd "drive".
So, is there any way to reconfigure this as a single "drive" ?
No practical one, I'm sure.
If you have the applicable tools, it might be entertaining and/or educational to hack the device, replacing the firmware with a straightforward USB memory stick implementation. But in terms of return on investment, it'd be an almost certain desaster.
"If the memory is described to the OS as a ROM drive, no amount of hex-editing will write to it."
Actually, that is why I suggested winhex. In effect, it bypasses the OS and allows direct writing to the device. A read only file is described to the OS as read only, but you can still manipulate it.
But ... I guess if the device really does have a read only partition, I guess you're options are really limited.
Definitely - it's only a 512MB stick!