Remove Write Protection Problem While Formatting

I wanted to do a format on the computer,I was not sure if it would boot from the CD , so I changed the boot sequence and tried.The setup started then stopped. It said there were antivirus files stopping the setup.

I still continue with the same setup thinking that these files will be deleted.
When the format was completed it said,WRITE PROTECT ERROR..............format terminated.

I found a few zonealarm files which I deleted, when I tried to empty the recycle bin it would not let me delete one of the files, it said, error deleting file, cannot delete ZLCommDB Access denied, make sure the disk is not full or write protected and the file is not currently in use.

What may be the Problem.

Try this,

1. Check out if the USB drive has a small swich for write protection. If its there try toggling the switch.
   
2. Windows can all write protect flash drives. Check out this registry path,HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

You may find a key here on the right side by the name 'WriteProtect'. If it's not there this would not be the cause of problem. If it's there, make sure that the value is 0.

Please let me know if this doesn't work.

Look in BIOS to see if it's protecting/preventing boot sector writes.

I had a somewhat similar problem. I couldn't load Windows 2000 because there were some bad sectors. What I did was to create a slightly smaller partition than the entire size and it worked fine. In other words, create a partition of about 15 Gb as primary (active) DOS partition and the other as extended DOS parition and try it. Might work. Good luck.