Sorry Bud, Windows here for a little while yet....
But, I have a friend with a mac and might meet up with him in a couple of weeks so if I've not solved it by then can I PM you for the screen shots?

Copy/paste from the wiki page on liveCD's

Copied from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD

What this means is: You have a complete functioning operating system that runs from the CD itself. There's no need to install it, there's no need to abandon Windows or anything like that. It's just a temporary switch to an OS.

Once you're done in the OS from the liveCD, you simply reboot your machine and you will find it in unaltered state.

Complicated? Nah. It just sounds complicated. But than again: Try to explain something about music theory to someone, let's say, the three basic notes to form the most basic chord, ground note, terts and quint, or even more fun (and more dazzled looks) contra point harmony (not sure if that is the right term in English though). What I mean is: With a bit of reading, hanging out on forae like this and of course utilisation of your own brain you should be more than capable of doing this.

The page on gParted can be found here
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c26XVy6TObg

Thanks for that info. You just gave me a perfect excuse to finish last nights bottle of red wine and turning up the volume. Sweet!

Of course buddy.

anthonie, Thanks for the info on the live CD, had a good read this morning and it's definitely something I will try.

Not so happy about the youtube clip though! ;-) I had loads of work to do this morning, fantastic and as usual lead me on another journey through youtube! Thanks, I'd not seen that one :-)..

On Topic - my microCD adapter arrived this morning and the switch made no difference, still unable to format as it's still write protected!

You could try to overwrite the SD card with zeros...
Or try the panasonic formatter (should also work for non panasonic devices)
http://panasonic.jp/support/global/c...oad/index.html

If you know someone with a N8 maybee he can format the card... (The N8 can also format sd cards with drm enabled)

Btw: If I'm right informad the usal read only switch is read out by the card reader (there is some sensor inside)

@Dan sorry mate, didn't have time to log in again last night. Using XP mount your card so that PC can see it.

Then right click "My Computer" and go to "Manage". Once the console opens load the Disk Management service. You will see your card listed in there under whatever drive letter the system assigned to it. Should be easy to locate.

Right click onthe drive and go to "Properties". Click on the "Security" tab at the top, and check that you have a group or user name that is "Everyone". Highlight it and then go "Edit" - check that "Full Control" is highlighted and all other permissions are highlighted except "Special Permissions". Apply the changes and exit out through "OK".

Drive should no longer be write protected.

Let me know if this fixes it or not. Alternatively you could attempt to format whilst still in Disk Management by right clicking and selecting "Format". Use the FAT32 file format. Failing that we can try to run the same thing in DOS Command Prompt;

Go Start > Run and type cmd. This opens command prompt (can't recall to be honest but I believe that Administrator access is a given in XP, been working on 7 for a while now so everything is "Run as Administrator"). We want to get into the disk partition manager service within DOS so type;
This will show you the currently connected storage devices - locate your card and note what disk number it is- for arguments sake we'll call it "Disk 1". Now we will run a DOS format of the disk so type;
Done this myself to create bootable W7 from USB a number of times so used the NTFS filesystem rather than FAT32 but it worked a treat. Only try the DOS based format if Disk Management can't / won't do it.

Let me know how you get on fella..... Cheers

Thanks Switch,

No worries, I've been at work for a few hours today but got home eager to have a go.

Tried the first method but I don't have a 'security' tab at the top so got stuck there on that one!
also attempting to format whilst still in Disk Management by right clicking and selecting "Format" gives the same error - 'card is write protected'.

When trying through the cmd prompt the disk isn't listed after the 'list disk' command, only the pc's hard drive is listed.

so, still stuck, still bemused and still trying!

Thanks for your efforts though, it is appreciated.


@ Flexxxv - Tried the panasonic one first, no joy i'm afraid.

It's a tool I would not want to miss in my software collection as it has succeeded more than once where others failed.

I deeply regret my lack of anticipating thinking here. I hope you can forgive me. If not, I'm sure we'll be able to find a suitable youtube vid for this situation.

Neither had I. And that goes for the opera as well. Like I said: Sweet! And I am normally not that fond of opera's.

I have to go and sleep, so no time for a google round, but I wonder what the "dd" in combination with "mkfs" could do for you. Thinking in the line of flexxxv here. Both programs are already installed on your n900.

I'll have a look tomorrow. I assume the card may be wiped, right?

what's ur pc OS ?

i fixed this problem by connecting my n900 with pc then auto run will pop something in pc screen .. chose the recommended option !!

I don't know if this is ur problem .. but no loss in trying

Hey man, that's simply strange..... Mounted it as a drive and it's not in DiskPart or Device Manager.... Very strange....

There is another workaround - although it's more of a "hardware" workaround, which involves sticky tape and the SD itself. On the opposite side of the card to where the switch would be take a look and tell me if there is a notch cut out of the side.... If there is, we can possibly fool any device into thinking it's not write protected.