[drtjmich]

I have a external USB hard drive (Maxtor Personal Storage 3100) that was was working fine with my laptop (XP Home). Now I get a message "USB device not recognized" with a little bubble window saying it malfunctioned and Windows does not recognize it..for assistance in solving this problem, click here. I have the same problem with another identical laptop here at home. I took the storage device to work and it works fine on my work computer (XP Pro).

At work all Windows updates are controlled but at home they are automatic loaded so I am wondering if a Windows update did this since I found this below on Windows website: (I tried what was here but could not find "StorageDevicePolicies" where they described)
I also contacted Maxtor and did what they suggested (which was uninstall all USB controller USB roothub and reboot)

Thanks in advance for your help,
Denise

SUMMARY
Your Windows XP PC may not recognize the removable storage devices that you connect to your PC. However, the other USB devices may work normal.

CAUSE
This is not an issue and a security feature added in Service Pack 2. When you connect any removable media device to a computer that has Microsoft Windows XP SP 2 installed, and the solution provided in the following MS Kbase article may not resolve the issue:
http://support.micro...om/?kbid=823293

RESOLUTION
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

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If you do not have the StorageDevicePolicies key, create it through the Registry Editor by making a new key and setting it to whatever you need. If no key exists, whatever the default value is is used instead.

[Neil Jones]

If you do not have the StorageDevicePolicies key, create it through the Registry Editor by making a new key and setting it to whatever you need. If no key exists, whatever the default value is is used instead.

[drtjmich]

What is a Dword?