USB memory stick XP oddity

Recently some of our PC's have been behaveing oddly in reguard to accessing any USB memory stick with explorer

Basically a PC that up untill now has had absoultly no problems, then on day you plug in a memory stick, it detects it as normal, however if you then open up "my computer" and try to double click on the icon, you get an "Access is Denied" message.
However if you let the autorun open the contense in a folder it works.
Or if you open "folders" bar and go to it that way it's all there.
From within programs you can still browse to it and open files.
It's all a bit odd and we've got no idea what is causeing it. :surrender:

We've tried 128mb-2gb and 7 differnt brand/makes
Corsair, Buffalo, SanDisk, unknown cheapy, EasyDisk, Disco & Sony
All worked without any problem before and still do on other PCs

This is currently more of an annoience/mystery than an actual problem as yet, however it does appear to be spreading.

Currently thinking it could be a windows update/new security feature :rolleyes: although it could be a sign of something more sinster.

So any ideas?
:help:

It's not some badly designed GPO that's designed to stop people using USB keys and failing miserably is it?

Nope, at least it shouldn't be, should be letting people use there memory sticks . . .

But it also does it when loged on as locally as administrator.

emm this does sound strange, have you checked its not a conflict on the drive letter is trying to use? Might be worth checking under computer management or reassigning the drive letter its using...

I have a Sandisk Cruzer that worked fine everywhere apart from work. No administrative access to my PC there so none of the troubleshooting tips worked.

Then I came across a troubleshooting guide that suggested unmapping network drives that could be clashing with it. Bingo, 10 seconds later it's up and running fine. Might be worth a try?

MApped network drives are always H: S: R: T: & V: considering none of our PC's have more than one hard drive or cd/dvd.
Currently users have access to E: F: G: so in thoery up to 3 USB sticks could be used. (although I belive running .exe from them is banned I'll have to double check that one, I know it's caused problems with sticks that have thoes silly pointless autorun front ends in the past)

Still don't know what the heck could be causeing this to suddenly start happening.
I'm wondering if something is trying to auto run off it that's causeing a problem :confused:

side note: I really hate so much current software for autorun, eg photoshop elements automatically opening it's stupid picture browser the moement you put any cd in the drive.
"No, I don't want to browse all the image files on this copy of office2007 for easy printing, I want to install it!" :angst:

Think I've managed to find the problem.

Autorun.ini

I'm pritty sure that if you set windows to "always use this" when it comes up with a list of possible things to open the memory stick with it creates an autorun.ini file and it's this that's getting blocked.
Delete the autorun.ini and it works fine. but not much help as it's a system file so invisible to most users.

I say I'm pritty sure as we may have a virus problem, (not only do the students bring there colds to school but they bring infected memory sticks in as well :rolleyes: they are hopeless with email spam/viruses too) every student who come to me because they cannot access there memory stick has thrown up virus warnings, so we could have an infected pc someware . . .:censored: