I've been looking long and hard on the web and this is exactly what I was searching for.  Thanks and keep up the great blogging.

Thank you very much.  This is a great progarm and did exactly what I wanted.  Wonderful job....Brian

Thanks also for this, Andy.

Cheeky SanDisk mutha-funnas

you say, make sure the cruzer is plugged in and then run the removal tool.

however, sandisk's site says that you not only need to have it plugged in but that you need to have the u3 launchpad running.

this is an important consideration, since many of us can't get the launchpad itself to run.

I copied the removal tool (that came with my 4gb cruzer in the zip file) to my local hard drive and ran it from there.  It acted like it was running fine, then 2 minutes later it said, critical error, please restart your PC and run it again.

OK?  so I did this but after restart, the Cruzer doesn't even show up in MyComputer and when I run the removal tools, they all say, "please install a u3 device."  great.

So I go to disk management and can see the "healthy" 3.84gb drive sitting there.  But there is no file system on it and no drive letter.  great.

I assign a random unused drive letter and it takes it.  (though still doesn't show up in MyComputer)  And then I right-click and try to format it FAT32.  No dice.  Says it's not enabled, must restart PC first.  what?  I go to properties for that drive and it says Enabled and should be working.  great.

I'm at a loss.  This $30 gizmo has already cost me more than that in wasted time.  I love computers.

The other thing is to make sure that you disable/stop or unplug all other USB devices and that you manually disable the CD_ROM drive version of the USB jump drive and this should make the program work....

Astonishingly simple. U3 has annoyed me since I bought the device. Why didn't Sandisk put the utility on the disk in the first place. (This is a rhetorical question. The answer is: to push a new affordance in the hope that by some miracle people will adopt it and it will become a standard.

Now if I could just find as simple a way to migrate Thunderbird mail from my XP machine to my new Vista machine I could go to bed.

you also have to disable any memory card readers that are a part of your computer...not as astonishingly simple as i had hoped...now all "I" have to do before going to bed is reinstall all the things i uninstalled before calling SanDisk to find out it was the card readers that came in my computer. Hope this helps the next pseudo-geek that comes along.

This does not work. It never finds the Cruzer -- acts like it is not even plugged in. So much for that solution. What a worthless piece of crap the Cruzer is.

 I tried your solution on the Cruzer 1.0 micro that my son gave me. He had used it before with a MAC but when I tried to use it with my PC it continually locked up my computer. I checked all of my USB ports with a removable harddrive and they all worked. Every time I tried to insert the SanDisk the computer would lock up and nothing would happen. I tried to download and install a new U3 launcher but that would end up with a locked up (program not responding message). So I took the Cruzer to work and to Best Buy and it started right up at both places. WTF? My PC is a 6-7 year old HP with Windows XP and runs everything else I plug into it. So I thought, maybe my antivirus software was preventing it from working so I disabled that and tried again - no luck. I'm out of ideas and will probably will have to buy another thumbdrive. All I want it for is to load a few files for my FTA satellite receiver in my workshop and this is the best way to transfer the files. However, I cant see buying another thumbdrive if a new one wont work either - any ideas?
Thanks,  pete

Can you just reformate the USB device?  Will this remove the software that autorruns?

My Cruzer's not working. I think it's because it was ejected wrongly twice. What Can I do to fix it?

Throw it away and save yourself a load of time and heartache. And tell everyone you know not to buy one!

Thank you for the tool. I got  a Cruiser  2GB to use for storage and when I plugged it in  I got a bunch of stuff I didn't want. You made it easy to remove. Keep the good work.

beautilicious!
Worked like a charm.

Tx

I am starting to really hate these Cruiser drives!  I downloaded the uninstaller, but it keeps saying

"This program only supports one U3 drive removal. Exit the program and unplug  extra drive then try again."

I have no other drives plugged in other than my internal hard drives.  Uninstalling U3 is not the piece of cake it is reported to be.  Anyone know how to flat get rid of the programs on the Cruiser?

Another satisfied reader here.  Thanks so much for this assistance.  I bought the jump drive for my son and his school's computers were not liking the U3 software at all.  We are fixed!!!!!!!

Thanks,

The one that posted the comment to remove all other USBs and card readers had it right.

Thanks- that freakin app was so useless.