Removal of U3 crap from USB-Flash- how?
 

Hi!
does any one has an idea how to get rid of "advanced capabilities" offered by U3? I bought the USB-Flash without single idea that something like U3 exists... and the do - on my drive...

OK, under Linux that crap dies on its own, but when i go to some Windows WS, it tries to tempt me again and again.

have you tried reformatting the drive

yes, that does not help (even fdisk-ing, by the way - cfdisk crashes if you show him brand new U3 Flash drive), because all the U3 "goodiees" ar written in some protected area of memory, which under windows shows up as CD-ROM, but is hidden under linux

Wait for a U3 aware Linux?
 

So, the solution is to wait for an U3 update to Linux?

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When I plug in my Cruzer Micro U3 Flash, Fedora automatically opens the CD/DVD creator!


The USB flash has two icons on the system "tray"

1) External CD-R drive
2) SanDisk U3 cruzer micro

If I ignore the CD-R stuff it seems to work ok as a flash drive.

Except, that the amber led stays on most of the time, just flickers now and then. Even when not mounted. Even after "It's safe to remove, bla, bla, bla on windows.
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ps: When I mount the 'USB-Flash U3 CD-R drive' (in Fedora 4), I can see the U3 special files, "autorun.inf, LaunchPad.zip, LaunchU3.exe"

See the link below.
http://www.geekyjock.com/pages/blog/...usb-flash.html
At the end of article is a link to a little piece of free software
that works to remove U3 partition etc. Like the article suggests
it is copywritten by the folks at Best Buys Geek Squad. Works great.
No going back however so make sure removal is what you want.
In my mind the makers of these flash drives are very irresponsible
for bundling this crapware with their drives and not including any
means of removing software.

To use plugin drive and click on/run program. Walk through wizard.
Result a clean and reformatted drive. Make sure you have backed up any
data you may have on drive. BTW this is a Windows program I think.

I had similar problem with the original HDD in my Aspire 5672WLMi
notebook. It had a 4GB partition on it that was just wasted space to me
(recovery partition). So after making the recovery DVD that my machine kept nagging me for I used Darik's Boot and Nuke to remove and restore
that wasted space

I'll be trying these programs,... eventually.
 

Well,

This looks like a good URL for anyone wanting to hack their U3 USB-flash drive. The following caught my eye;

"LPInstaller.exe" and "U3-Uninstaller.exe" are repeatedly usable to remove/re-add the U3 functionality, so it should be safe for people to experiment with, if they have both utils.


From: Hacking U3 Smart USB Drives at

http://cse.msstate.edu/%7Erwm8/hackingU3/

I used to hate U3 too...
 

I used to think of U3 as crap, but it can actually to useful things. That U3 CD partition is bootable on most modern PC's...

I used to hate U3 too...
 

The only issue I've had is that Windows always re-adds the U3 software to the flash drive. The solution is simple, never insert your tool into a windows boxen. It is a bit irresponsible since the drives are known to have a limited read/write life. Fortunately the modern equivalent doesn't have 100MB of junk for U3. That was annoying for a 2GB drive. 5% used by useless software by default. Not to mention 5% below capacity due to marketing jargon. As I wonder what program would be 100MB in size? I can upload an hour concert to youtube in less than 100MB.

Absolutely not
 

I doubted this would happen so I checked it out myself. (I actually had a clean WinXP SP2 install laying around I had just set up for my kids to play games.) U3 crapware does not get reinstalled. The CD portion shows up as a CD and any autorun goes ahead and runs as it should. The u3-tool well and truly removes the U3 software as I said. Perhaps you already have the U3 software on your PC and that is reinstalling things?

It's been about a decade since I used a Windows PC for anything serious, but here's the process I remember for solving your problem:
Control Panel->
Add or Remove Programs ->
Select unwanted junk->
Click Remove.

All you need to do:
Back up data you want off it.
Plug it into a Linux box, run command: fdisk -l as root or sudo to find which device it is. Let's say it's "/dev/sdb" for my example, and first partition is /dev/sdb1, wipe it out including boot sector with dd command as follows: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb as root or sudo, wait for the prompt to return. Then plug it into a Windows box and try to access it, it will offer to format the drive, allow it to do so leaving all fields as is except give it a name in the Label field. After format you'll have no protected U3 stuff anymore.

That does not work on Sandisk Cruzer Micro 16 Gb (and I presume, won't work on other U3 devices). When I plug the USB in, it mounts 2 devices. One is a large (bout 14 gigz) partition, and mounts to /dev/sdb - that is formattable, but the other is an ISO9660 partition (CD-ROM), around 14 Mbyte. That is the U3 System partition, it mounts to /dev/sr1 as a read-only device (so you cannot wipe it with dd, if it would be read/write you could simply use any partition tool to manipulate it...)
If you have a Windows box, you don't have to fiddle around zeroing the boot sector, as every U3 software has the Uninstall feature, which will remove that annoying ISO9660 partition.
So the question remains, how can I remove both partition from an USB stick with U3 software on it, without Windows?

AFAIK there isn't any other option. You need to use the special windows U3 removal software.

Another problem with U3...

Some systems have a a BIOS updating utility that will allow the use of a USB-flash and the manufacturer's flash utility to upgrade the BIOS without involving any OS(read Windows). This is the case with my Gigabyte motherboard and Q-Flash. However the USB-flash must be free of anything but the BIOS and its flashing program.

U3 will block the way unless it can be removed. A bother, but then again we all surely still have a floppy drive as a fall back.

I have a sandisk 8GB with the U3. All the U3 stuff resides on its own partition. Just use gparted and delete the partition from it.

It does.

I noticed you mentioned in your post how it gets mounted automatically, unmount the partitions/drive first and make sure to wipe the entire device, not just a partition or two.

My gparted does not see the drive. I see "/dev/sda" (hdd) and "/dev/sdc" (thumb), so I assume the U3 dung is "sdb".

U3 again...

I had a SanDisk 2GB USB flash stick that I formatted with GParted to ext2 and used, but it did not mount reliably. I took it to a Windows machine, formatted it to fat32, then downloaded and ran the recommended U3 removal program. Thereafter the problem with mounting disappeared.

I assume that U3 may well have a permanence that resists an ordinary formatting process. I also assume that there is a good deal of difference in how well a regular formatting will remove U3 depending on the particular make, model, size, etc. of the flash drive. That is, results may vary, but I concluded that best practice would be to use the removal program.

Even better, I learned, and the next time looked around and bought a USB flash without the damned U3.

Simple.

U3 site had info.

http://u3.com/support/default.aspx#CQ3

http://u3uninstall.s3.amazonaws.com/U3Uninstall.exe

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/u3-unin...drive/#more-21

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/category/tools/

You cannot remove the U3 crap with any linux tools that I have found or tried. I installed a copy of windoze XP in VirtualBox, downloaded the windoze-only removal software from within virtual windoze, and used the software to remove. BTW, I have used my SanDisk Cruzer drives (all three of them) in windoze XP since and it did not reinstall the U3 crap.

Remove stupid U3 nonsense
 

Seems to work quite well:
http://georgia.ubuntuforums.org/show...=803809&page=2

I could not resist but to comment on the quote above ("set a man on fire"). I convulsed with laughter.

Use u3-tool
 

I found a solution for my situation. I have Ubuntu Natty. When I loaded a U3 type flash drive the desktop would freeze up, etc.

From synaptic I downloaded "u3-tool".

Couldn't find much documentation for it, until I found this code that worked for me:

,or That removed the "u3 crap" but maintained the files in it. It's easy to remove the remainder manually

Edit: May 23,2011 I Must be a thread killer :)