I've experienced exactly the same problem with my drive: most often Windows XP says the drive was write-protected - although the drive doesn't have any write-protection mechanism at all. I'm really frustrated! I've sent an email to Iomega on the support page - they immediately sent a new device to me, without even asking me further about the problem. I got that new drive before I had to send back my apparently defect one and it didn't cost me anything. So far, very good customer support, but ... the new drive doesn't work and Windows XP gives me exactly the same error message. I tried the drive in several computers with several different XP versions (SP1, SP2) and always experienced the same problem. Don't buy this drive!