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You are here: Home » Windows » Windows Requires Administrator Rights to Install USB Flash Drives

Windows Requires Administrator Rights to Install USB Flash Drives

Updated by Raymond - 8 months ago - Windows
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Installing USB flash drives in Windows XP is pretty easy you don’t need to install any third party drivers. Just insert the USB flash drive to any USB ports and it will automatically install. You should see a small balloon at the tray bar that says found new hardware “USB Mass Storage Device”.

Found New Hardware USB Mass Storage Device

The installation should take a few seconds. Once you get the message “Your new hardware is installed and ready to use”, it means that it has completed installing the drivers and you can now see an extra drive letter in My Computer.

A while back I got a question from a member in forum asking me how to enable the USB port because whenever he plugs in a USB pen drive at his office computer, Windows will ask for the administrator username and password even though the user is set to auto login as administrator. At first I thought there were some registry or policy settings that needed changing, or even third party software that made Windows prompt for admin credentials when USB flash drive is inserted to a computer but it turns out that wasn’t the case after I went through this problem myself.

A Found New Hardware prompt appears with the message “You must be a member of the Administrators group on this computer to install this hardware: USB Disk Pro USB Device” whenever I plug in any USB pen drive to the computer logged on as User and NOT admin.

You must be a member of the Administrators group on this computer to install this hardware

If I type in the administrator username and password, it is able to install the USB flash drive. But if I don’t type the correct administrator username and password or press the Cancel button, the USB flash drive won’t install and I will get the error message “You do not have sufficient security privileges to install hardware on this computer. Please contact your site administrator, or logout and log in again as an administrator and try again.”

You do not have sufficient security privileges to install hardware on this computer. Please contact your site administrator, or logout and log in again as an administrator and try again.

And finally, there is a balloon confirmation from the system tray bar saying “A problem occurred during hardware installation. Your new hardware might not work properly.”

A problem occurred during hardware installation. Your new hardware might not work properly

I have several methods suggested on forums and websites to try to fix this problem but none of it worked for me although obviously every situation is different. I will list them here in case you want to try and it might work for you. There are a few reasons why it doesn’t automatically install the USB mass storage drivers.

1. Corrupted drivers (usbstor.inf, usbstor.pnf, usbstor.sys)

A possible solution is to replace usbstor.inf and usbstor.pnf in C:\Windows\INF\ and usbstor.sys in C:\Windows\system32\drivers\ with a good one. If you do not have access to another copy of usbstor files, you can download all 3 latest latest files (usbstor.inf, usbstor.pnf, usbstor.sys) from here.

2. Users do not have permission to install drivers

Solution: Use this tool Allow Users to Install USB Jump Drives.

Allow Users to install USB

This tool will grant Users and Power Users the ability to install USB mass storage devices by setting permissions for the file usbstor.inf to modify, read and execute, read, write.

3. There is possible corruption in the Catroot2 folder causing Windows not to see the USB driver as signed

The best way to get round this is to rename the Catroot2 folder using these steps:

Go to Start -> Run, type cmd, and then press enter.

Type the following at the command prompt:

net stop cryptsvc

ren %systemroot%\System32\Catroot2 oldcatroot2

net start cryptsvc

Navigate to the following folder or type it into the Run box:

%systemroot%\system32\CatRoot\{F750E6C3-38EE-11D1-85E5-00C04FC295EE}

Remove all tmp*.cat files from the folder. Do not remove any other files in this folder other than those that start start with “tmp”. Also note it is the Catroot2 folder to rename and NOT Catroot which shouldn’t be renamed.

Microsoft also has a one of their Fixit tools which can fix a number of potential errors relating to this problem including solution a from below.

If the above solutions still don’t allow Users to install USB devices, it is quite possibly an unsigned drivers problem. You can use Windows own “File Signature Verification” to check if the drivers are signed or not. Go to Start -> Run, type sigverif and click OK. Click Advanced button and select “Look for other files that are not digitally signed“. Make sure the file type is *.* and the location to look for is C:\Windows. Also, check “Include subfolders” check box. Click OK and it will take a few minutes to scan.

Verify drivers signed files

Normally the amount of unsigned files displayed in Signature Verification Results should be less than 50. I ran a check on my Windows and found out that there’s 2288 unsigned files and with only 57 signed.

Sigverif unsigned files in Windows

I had to do a Windows repair to fix the problem because it’s way too many unsigned files. After repair, I did a check again with sigverif and this time it showed 2344 signed files with only 17 unsigned files. I logged in as User, insert the USB flash drive and it can automatically install without prompting for login credentials. Before doing a Windows repair, there are other options that might be able to fix the unsigned driver files problem.

Possible Solutions:

a) Make sure Cryptographic Services is running.

Go to Start -> Run, type services.msc and click OK. Look for Cryptographic Services and make sure that the status is “Started” and Startup Type is “Automatic“.

Enable Cryptographic Services

b) Ignore warnings to install drivers that has not passed Windows Logo testing.

Right click My Computer, select Properties. In System Properties, go to Hardware tab and click Driver Signing button. Select “Ignore – Install the software anyway and don’t ask for my approval“.

Ignore Driver Signing Options

c) If all doesn’t work, your final choice is to reinstall or repair Windows. You can refer to this article on how to repair Windows.

There is another tool called Atsiv by Linchpin Labs which is allows the user to load and unload signed or unsigned drivers on 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows XP, Windows 2K3 and Windows Vista. However, they’ve removed it from their site because Microsoft has claimed that it is a Malware. I’ve tried to load usbstor.sys with Atsiv, but still unable to install USB flash drive without administrators account.

28 comments on “Windows Requires Administrator Rights to Install USB Flash Drives”

  1. Sammy says:
    2 years ago

    Tnks a lot, great help!! Solution #2 does the job.
    Windows xp pro.

    Reply
  2. princess brown says:
    2 years ago

    I want to sign up for adminstrator group how must i do it

    Reply
  3. mohannad (from jordan) says:
    2 years ago

    hiiiii
    iam mohannad from jordan
    i make personal windows while i try windwos on vmware player, an error occurred
    the error in this link
    please reslove my problem

    and if i put awrong password it occurred message

    please help me

    Reply
  4. nius says:
    3 years ago

    thanx u very much

    Reply
  5. derrick says:
    3 years ago

    wat i dont get how i be a member

    Reply
  6. Human Performance Unlimited Marketing says:
    3 years ago

    Will this tool -AllowUSBJumpDrives.exe override what I’ve done to restrict users in our domain or in the workstations to once again be able to plug & play USB drives. I ‘ve used a GPO to restrict access to USBSTOR.INF and USBSTORE.PNF to disable the service and applied an adm template to disable the drivers installed domain wide. My drawback here is that I have to manually start USBSTOR before connecting a device. Is AllowUSBJumpDrives.exe a better seamless solution?If I’m not mistaken it will prompt me to logon for credentials. correct?

    Reply
  7. Andrew says:
    3 years ago

    I’ve had this problem in the past and it was after creating my Windows XP image with nLite – I wrote some very brief notes on it at the time on a blogsite. If you used nLite to create your Windows XP disc and you’re having problems adding USB drives to your system (or you have to go through the full hardware wizard for simple things like mice and keyboards) then you’re likely to have corrupt files.

    nLite it a fantastic piece of software, but somewhere along the line it plays with a file that it shouldn’t.

    Reply
  8. Matthew Deemer says:
    3 years ago

    I had the same exact thing on a company workstation. Log in on an account with administrator privelages then go to Device Manager and find the USB device giving trouble. Right click on it and select ‘Uptadt Driver” When it finishes, the drivers will be loaded and when a ‘user’ account logs on, they won’t need to load anything. The USB flash drive should simply be recognized for what it is.
    It worked for me.
    -Matt

    Reply
  9. sean doyle says:
    3 years ago

    my computer does regonize my device but can’t install it properly and i can’t find it on any of the USB flash drives HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply
  10. SPatel says:
    3 years ago

    I had this problem, and after a lot of tries, just reinstalled SP3 and it worked fine.

    Reply
  11. SAIFUL says:
    3 years ago

    MY MP3 IPOD CAN NOT GET IN MY COMPUTER

    Reply
  12. baihagee says:
    4 years ago

    ผมต้องทำอย่างไร

    Reply
  13. Markofo says:
    4 years ago

    In the setupapi.log I noticed error while installing the flashdisk driver:
    #E358 An unsigned or incorrectly signed file \”C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\CnxClsCo.dll\” for driver \”DataTraveler 2.0\” blocked (server install). Error 0x800b0100: No signature was present in the subject.
    #E161 Processing of call to class installer failed. Error 0x800b0100: No signature was present in the subject.

    This dll belongs to Conexant USB DSL modem driver. After unistalling the modem app/driver everyhing works fine.

    Reply
  14. Riyaz says:
    4 years ago

    Hello,

    All I did, but no solution, I can use the flash on Administrator but not in users the same problem arose, mine is windows xp prof, please update and its c:\winnt

    Reply
  15. Fgsanz says:
    4 years ago

    Hi again. Sorry for the spanish ;-)
    You can try to open gpedit.msc, and to enable permission to load and download controllers, working with xp professional. As xp-home does not include such gpedit, I don’t know how to proceed in this case

    Reply
  16. Fgsanz says:
    4 years ago

    Yo solucioné el mismo problema a través de gpedit.msc, habilitando un permiso para “cargar y descargar controladores” para los usuarios limitados. Funciona con xp profesional. Con el home no sé cómo se puede hacer, ya que no incluye gpedit.

    Reply
  17. usb drives says:
    4 years ago

    Your USB drive is now bootable.
    Insert your newly formatted drive into any USB-bootable mainboard, reboot, and select the USB drive as the first boot device. You will be brought to a Windows 98 MS-DOS prompt. From here you can update your BIOS, make system disk fixes, etc.

    Reply
  18. redankaiah says:
    4 years ago

    hi raymond, im also having same problem, indev management, it will show yellow balloon in usb mass storage device, and pls tell me where i will get latest drivers for pendrive

    Reply
  19. Fadi says:
    4 years ago

    Thank you for the great info

    Reply
  20. Chrissie says:
    5 years ago

    Hello, all!

    Thanks for this excellent article. This helped to solve the same problem on nearly 100 notebooks by simply exchanging the syssetup.dll.

    Thanks again to all for your great help!

    Reply
  21. gearloose says:
    5 years ago

    sorry the file is called storeprop.dll

    Reply
  22. gearloose says:
    5 years ago

    sorry the file is called storprop.dll

    Reply
  23. gearloose says:
    5 years ago

    Hello Raymond, (Is that you name? :-)

    I had the same problem with some clients that the these machines need admin rights to install usb-flash drives. Also I found in the file setupapi.log that there is an error with 2 files called

    syssetup.dll and
    storprob.dll.

    I took the 2 files from an other system an the problem was solved.

    I also tried all these solutions here at the site but none solved the problem.

    allahop gearloose

    Reply
  24. Shtiklla says:
    5 years ago

    This is grate you are the best

    Reply
  25. LFD Admin says:
    5 years ago

    This solved the problem in our computer lab:

    net stop cryptsvc
    ren %systemroot%\System32\Catroot2 oldcatroot2
    net start cryptsvc

    support.microsoft.com/kb/822798

    Reply
  26. Raymond says:
    5 years ago

    Thanks Sulz and anonymous.

    Reply
  27. Anonymous says:
    5 years ago

    This is two awesome posts in a row I’ve seen here (new reader). Keep up the great work!

    Reply
  28. Sulz says:
    5 years ago

    Hey thanx a lot raymond appreciate wat ur doing for ppl

    Reply

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