Windows Mobile Memory Card Encryption stops WinXP from reading the card

Bad experiences with Windows Mobile 6.1 encryption file EncFiltLog.menc

Today I was frightened as I tried to read the data I saved from a Windows Mobile 6.1 device to my MicroSD card from my Windows XP desktop PC. WinXP recognized the usb stick as changeable device but no drive and no contents. Simply “please insert drive”.

I am using a very small Kingston MicroSD card reader.

microsd

Maybe it is defective, I thought, and then used a MicroSD to SD card adapter and put this in a SD Card reader. This time I could access the content! Is the Kingston USB MicroSD card reader really defective? I tested the drive in my netbook running Ubuntu 9.04 and it was able to read it. But there was one ugly file: EncFiltLog.menc.

This file is created by WM6.1 regardless of the memory card has to be encrypted or not. The Kingston thumb MicroSD card USB adapter and WinXP had problems with the file and just displayed no contents. I deleted the file using Ubuntu (which fortunately does not care about this file) and now was able to read the MicroSD card again with the Kingston USB adapter and WinXP.

Hopefully you will not step into this pitfall.