Saturday, November 27, 2010 11:43 AM
I blogged a while back about a WP7 hack that was making the rounds showing how to turn your phone into a mass-storage device (so like a USB drive basically).
I got around to try it today, and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. Below are the directions (you can find these on a number of sites, the version below is from BigTech.com):
- Open Windows Registry Editor by typing regedit in your start menu
- Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\
- Then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB (and not the other ControlSet01 or 02 if you have them) and then search for ZuneDriver
- You will see at least one sub folder under the entry VID_045E&PID_04EC&MI_00. Choose the device folder for which you want this change for.
- Change ShowInShell from 0 to 1 <- this enable Windows Explorer to show the device when plugged in
- Change PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell from 1 to 0
- Change EnableLegacySupport from 0 to 1 <- this enables Windows Explorer to detect the device
- Once its done just plug-in your device to your PC and you will be able to see it as regular Flash drive inmy computer explorer window
Now maybe its just me, but I missed something that was implied in all versions of these directions. First they tell you to “search for ZuneDriver” in the registry. Then they talk about the “sub folder under the entry blah blah” and “Choose the device folder for which you want this change for”. I thought, since ZuneDriver was what was being searched for, that this is where the reg key changes needed to be made, and that the sub-folder being talked about WAS the ZuneDriver folder.
Not so.
In fact, the ZuneDriver folder didn’t have any of the keys that the instructions say to change. Figured maybe I had to create them, but then why were the other keys not listed either?
And then I noticed it…
Click to enlarge
It’s not the ZuneDriver folder you want, its the Device Parameters folder! THIS is where you set the values.Once that was done, I plugged in my phone and voila – free drag-and-drop functionality without the need for the Zune software.
Unfortunately, what I was *really* hoping for was that I could browse the folder structure and get to the MMS files so I could get my texting to work, but no dice. You can copy files to the device, but there’s no directory browsing.
Still, hope this clarification helps!