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Hack a Win Cleaner USB?

Jason Betts
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Hi guys! I found this at my local dollar store, a USB drive that comes with the installer for a program called Win Cleaner. I thought maybe I could reformat it as an empty USB drive so I could get a cheap flash drive, but it's seen by my computer as a CD-ROM so I can't format it in Windows Explorer or Disk Management. Does anyone have some advice on how I could format this thing as a normal flash drive? Even if it's just 8 MB, for $1 each that makes for a cheap throw away drive if I want to give a PDF or a few photos to someone, and they have tons of these at the dollar store! 

 

If we can't figure this out, it's just $1 lost, I can accept that. But this could make for some cool projects if we can get this to work!

 

P.S: I already searched Google for this, and found a program called hpflash1 that some Reddit'rs said would work, but it doesn't recognize the drive. (To be more precise, the drive doesn't appear on the list of format-able drives) 

 

win%20cleaner%202.jpg

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you may be able to format it on linux

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

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9 minutes ago, manikyath said:

chances are that it's a ROM chip, and not actually flash memory.

 

in that case, you're SOL

That would suck. Can you tell by looking at the chip?

 

IMG_20160810_120052.jpgIMG_20160810_120100.jpg

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7 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

you may be able to format it on linux

Hmm. If I installed linux on a bootable USB then I could maybe format this using a tool built into linus? 

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4 minutes ago, Jason Betts said:

Hmm. If I installed linux on a bootable USB then I could maybe format this using a tool built into linus? 

you can run linux live off a usb stick and then you should be able to reformat it 

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

Skunkworks: R5 3500U, 16gb, 500gb Adata XPG 6000 lite, Vega 8. HP probook G455R G6 Ubuntu 20. LTS

Condor (MC server): 6600K, z170m plus, 16gb corsair vengeance LPX, samsung 750 evo, EVGA BR 450.

Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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11 minutes ago, Jason Betts said:

That would suck. Can you tell by looking at the chip?

 

 

i would guess thats a ROM chip tbh, i dont see any flash storage on there

I spent $2500 on building my PC and all i do with it is play no games atm & watch anime at 1080p(finally) watch YT and write essays...  nothing, it just sits there collecting dust...

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#1. Treat others as you would like to be treated.

#2. It's best to keep your mouth shut; and appear to be stupid, rather than open it and remove all doubt.

#3. There is nothing "wrong" with being wrong. Learning from a mistake can be more valuable than not making one in the first place.

 

Follow these simple rules in life, and I promise you, things magically get easier. " - MageTank 31-10-2016

 

 

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1 minute ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

i would guess thats a ROM chip tbh, i dont see any flash storage on there

it actually looks like it could be one of the common DIRT cheap rom chips, and offcourse the blob chip on the back for the USB connection.

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  • 6 months later...
Posted

That 8-pin chip is a flash memory.  I can't identify the manufacturer of the chip (The logo is some sort of stylized "G" with maybe another letter intertwined?), but the chip is wired just like a 64 Mbit SPI serial NOR flash memory; see attached datasheet.  This type of flash memory is VERY SLOW for the erase/write operations; in the millisecond range.  The controller chip (blob) probably supports erase and write operations, but what are the commands through the USB interface to make that happen?  Even if you knew the commands to send to the blob chip to erase/rewrite the 8-pin flash chip, it would be VERY SLOW!  The controller chip emulates a CDROM drive ( that's what both Windoze 10 and Linux say), so it cannot be formatted as a disk drive.  From the reviews I've read about the WinCleaner software, both this USB drive and the software on it are useless... 

n25q_64mb_1_8v_65nm.pdf

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  • 11 months later...
Posted

Wasted 20 bucks on that piece of shit when it first came out

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