HP Simplesave 500gb USB 2.0

[digikiwi]

Thanks the otherkiwi, that worked nicely in XP as well.  Went into device manager>CD/DVD drives> and disabled the HP Virtual drive and that has sorted it.  I then deleted all the HP crapware and now it behaves like a nice little external HD

[brynpalmer]

Did anyone find out about disabling the virtual CD in the firmware? I'm not talking about disabling it on the computer, I'm talking about within the device itself (it is really annoying when I take it to someones house and it tries installing stuff)

[es-em]

Recapituling...

1. Disable virtual CD in adminstrative tool

2. Format and partitioning the hard disk

2 Use it as a normal mass storage device.

Is it right?

Stefano

[UkiddingRt]

OK --- here is how I did disabled the SimpleSave software so it no longer autoruns ... this is with a 320Gb SimpleSave drive I bought from Sam's Club. I did this under Win XP Pro w/ SP3.

**Words of Caution ** this worked for me, I take no responsibility for anyone else bricking their drive, their computer, their relations with their spouse or global warming **

1) Connect HP drive for the 1st time and watch all the HPware load onto your system :-(

2) With the drive still connected, go to Start - Settings - Control Panel - Administrative Tool - Device Manager - DVD-ROM/CD-ROM drives. find HP VIRTUAL CD ... , right click on this and choose 'Disable'.

3) FInd where the drive mapped itself to on your system. Go onto the drive itself and delete all the software. At this point all that should be left on the drive is the recycler and system info file.

4) Remove the HP drive from the USB port.

5) Reboot

6) Go into the startup folder and delete the file uUACTokenSvc.exe

7) Fire up regedit. Back up regedit. Using the regedit search function, search for uUACTokenSvc.exe --- it's in a couple places I believe. One place is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\controlset001\services\backupservice. There is a line labeled "Imagemap" ending with  uUACTokenSvc.exe  .... I deleted every instance that I found of that line. Use Find Next to locate all of them.

8) For good measure, still using regedit, I deleted every instance found of the keywords "SimpleSave" and "HP Launcher"

9) Reboot

10) You can now go to Documents&Settings -> {name} -> Application Data -> HP SimpleSave and successfully delete that folder.

11) Reboot

12) * finally * reconnect the HP drive

13) Reformat the HP drive -- I just used quick format

You now have nice 320 Gb drive without all the HPware. I've noticed that hooking the drive into another computer still causes that logical CD drive to be created, perhaps because of the secondary chip I've read that is supposed to be embedded on the drive.  Just disable the logical drive on the computer as it doesn't do anything at this point.

[joepho57]

I just bought one of these.  the folks at Staples assured me i could reformat it to FAT32 so that i could put Mac generated files on it. (or they offered to reformat it for me for $39, nearly half what i paid for it).  So later that night, I tried to reformat at and found only exFAT as the other alternative to NTSF; so I ended up calling HP support, was told they're not really geared up to support devices like this, but the tech tried to help me by going to command prompt, we spent an hour on the phone before getting to where it looked like it was reformmating (very slow), I left it run all night and woke up to find a message "volume too large for FAT32."  So i set it to refromat to default settings, but it looks like it wiped the software, user manuals, etc. off of it, which  may be fine, but my  questions are this?  If I create Photoshop files on a Mac Computer; can't I just copy them onto this like I would a flash drive?  Also, under properties, it shows only 465 gb available, so I guess this partion that ithers have mentioned is still there?  Should I try to get the software and other documentation reinstalled/ If so, How?

Thanks in advance.

[tgell]

I just wanted an external drive also. Before I even booted to windows, I booted off of a GParted Live CD and repartitioned and reformated to NTFS. Well, the virtual CD still showed up because I believe it is in firmware and cannot be deleted so I had to disable the drive in Device Manager as per a post in this thread. Now, I just have an ordinary external hard drive I am happy with. The only thing is, when attaching to a new computer, the CD drive will show up and has to be disabled in device manager. There a two files in the virtual CD, an autorun.ini file and hplauncher.exe. I hope HP will offer a firmware update to disable the virtual CD in firmware but I doubt it.

joepho57:

By the way, GParted also supports formating to hfs / hfs+.

[sorefinger15]

The Virtual CD is a pain when you are using it on a lot of different Machines.

I had the same problem with the WD 500gig Passport Drive, 

and found WDSmartWareVirtualCDManagerforWindows-v1.0.7.4.zip that allows "YOU" to choose whether "YOU" want the Virtual CD or not, unlike HP.

The WD500 Passport Drive uses a USB only internal Hard Drive with no SATA  or IDE connection.

The HP SimpleSave uses a SATA internal Hard Drive.

So here is how to solve the PROBLEM

1. save all the data on the SimpleSave, MAKE SURE YOU DO THIS !

2. pull it apart gently with your fingernails and remove the SATA drive.

3. buy a cheap Generic SATA to USB enclosure.

4. right click on "My Computer" select "Manage" > "Disk Management" and make new partition(s) and format.

    or on Mac "Disk Utility"

5. copy all the data back on it.

6. take the leftover remains of the SimpleSave outside on the concrete (Wearing Eye Protection)

    then proceed to smash it with a rather large hammer into very small pieces.

    (you will feel a lot better after the hell it has put you through)

Now that is "SIMPLE"

[bigdog2k2]

I can't believe all the discussions that have occurred on this for a year and that there has been no response from HP on this.  It is apparent to me that HP does NOT care about their customers, but prefers to force "crapware" down their throats with NO options to remove said "crapware".

I used to like HP and their products and have bought and recommended many HP products to friends and companies that I have worked for.

Going forward, I will NEVER recommend another HP product to anyone (due to HP's responsiveness/LACK of responsiveness on this issue).

At least Western Digital and seeing the HUGE NEGATIVE response to their "crapware", posted a software program that would remove the software (at the customers discretion).

NO THANKS to HP for their TOTAL LACK & HP NO CARE!!!  

[mrpatras]

hi there, i found a reply regarding the SS HP (above). I need some help please. I bought 1 yr ago a HP simple save 1TB and one year later I purchased a 2TB HD with the intention of replacing the 1TB. But... it does not work! I can see on the drives list only the CD-rom but not the HD. If I replace the old one (1TB) it mounts. Could you help me pls?[text removed for privacy]

Thank you

[atim]

To Whom It May Concern: Hello. I purchased a portable external hard-drive (model hp sd500a) from Best Buy on November the 1st of 2010. Overall it seemed to be a very nice device when I used it for the first time, but with one very annoying drawback. The HPLAUNCHER virtual CD-ROM automatically mounts each time I connect the HP SimpleSave product to my computer. I need a way of disabling the virtual drive in your firmware. I don't wish to use the SimpleSave software, and therefore, do not need the virtual drive. I use this hard drive on several other operating systems as well, and the HPLAUNCHER virtual drive becomes much more annoying, and more of a hassle to deal with, when I plug the HP SimpleSave product into my Mac OS/X and Ubuntu computers. If I don't find a way to fix this problem, I have decided never to purchase another HP product again. This is a very annoying problem, and you're losing customers over the auto-mounting virtual CD "feature". Please publicly release a small, simple software tool to disable or remove the auto-mounting HP virtual CD from the product firmware for your HP SimpleSave products. Your customers are very annoyed by the fact that your company does not give them the choice to remove it when it gets in the way of using your products effectively. You are losing money to your competitors over this “lock-in” “feature”. Thank you very much for your attention. Sincerely, Tim Anderson (a very disgruntled customer)