Ebony Ivory
Smack-Fu Master, in training
Registered: July 30, 2006
Posts: 2
Posted Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete Message
Hi Everyone, I've just joined this forum after finding it through a Google including words like "U3", "removal" and "partition". What excellent stuff, and I'm glad I'm not the only one who hates this patronising U3 cr@p.
Sorry this first post is a long one, but some of you might find it interesting/instructive!
I've just bought a Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 2Gb drive, and it includes U3, plus news that the drive only works on Mac, Win2K or XP, and not earlier versions of Windows. As someone who still uses Win98 (don't ask why, but the reasons are manifold) I was somewhat pi$$ed that my new purchase was going to be useless ...
... or was it?
I pushed the thing into a USB socket on a spare machine running Win2K Server, and all the U3 stuff started up. Apart from taking an age to fire up (this machine was an old PII 300MHz laptop that I use for testing), it was an embarassing pile of poo that subsequently appeared on the screen.
Luckily, I noted the "Remove" option, and tried it. Several message boxes and dialogs tried to convince me otherwise, but I soldiered on, and eventually was told I now had a "plain" USB mass storage device. Hooray! But how to get it to work under Win98?
I downloaded Sandisks's old Cruzer Titanium drivers, and plugged my newly U3-stripped dongle into my main Win98SE desktop machine. Windows "found" the unknown device, but could not handle it. The SandDisk drivers did not cut the mustard.
But "hey", I thought, "if Windows 2K now sees this as a standard bulk USB mass storage device, why can't I use a generic or even proprietory driver on Win98?".
I did a Google, and found that later versions of Windows (ME onwards) use an INF file called USBSTOR.INF, and a driver called USBSTOR.SYS, to do USB storage things. WinME didn't have the INF file, but did have the SYS file, and I borrowed Win2K's version of the INF.
Moments later, my 2K/XP-only SandDisk (U3-) drive was picked up, registered, and seemed to be working on Win98. I could FORMAT it, CHKDSK it, and even store the odd file on in. But once in a while, it just locked up. But so, it turned out, did my existing Kingston DataTraveller II cards under the new regime.
I thought a bit longer, and began to wonder whether the Kingston drivers could handle the Sandisk: it was just a case of getting Win98 to understand that PU20SYSD (from Kingston) was a generic bulk driver that could power the Cruzer Titanium (ex-U3) from Sandisk.
So I ran REGEDIT, to see which strings had been associated with the Sandisk and UBSTOR, and cross-referenced this against the UBSTOR.INF file. I found an entry, relating to:
USB\Class_08&SubClass_06&Prot_50
I added a couple of lines to my Kingston PU20 INF file, using the above string, and then reset my registry to before the Titanium U3 experiments (something that's very easy in Win98), and restarted Windows ...
... "New Hardware Found". "USB Bulk Storage Device". So far, so good. "Sandisk U3 Titanium": even better.
The next thing I know, I have a new drive letter, K:, and full access to my U3-stripped Titanium 2048!!
So, in short, the steps I needed were:
1) Windows 2000; run U3 remove option, reformat drive
2) Windows 2000, grab USBSTOR.INF - it contains some lines you are going to want
3) Download Kingston (not Sandisk) drivers (for DataTraveler), and install (PU20SUSD.SYS and PU20DISK.PDR).
4) Edit Kingston's INF file to include the two entries:
[USBDRV]
%GenericBulkOnly.DeviceDesc%=usbdrv.Dev,USB\Class_ 08&SubClass_06&Prot_50
[Strings]
GenericBulkOnly.DeviceDesc="USB Mass Storage Device"
5) Plug in your "2K/XP/Mac-only", ex-U3 Sandisk drive, and enjoy a U3-free experience on your ancient version of Windows.
Brian
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