Formatting a 2GB flash drive with write protection

A friend gave me a promo 2GB USB flash drive from her work. I couldn't delete the only file on it or even format the drive since it has write protection. Google hasn't been any help. I'm trying this on a WinXP laptop. The flash drive doesn't have any write protection switch. I even opened up the casing to check the circuit board for any switches and it didn't have any.

I found the following copy pasta on several sites:

Before starting check for small write protection switch

How to remove a write protection from your USB memory Stick if there is no Write protection ON or OFF button on stick then
1. Shutdown your computer or laptop
2. Insert USB Memory Stick into your laptop or Computer
3. Turn on laptop and then immediately start pressing (F key then Advanced Boot Options screen will come up
4. Select Safe Mode with Command Prompt
5. After loading files if your USB Memory Stick drive letter is (G) for example then write as
6. C:\windows\system32>G: and press enter
7. G:\>format G: and press enter
8. If ask you (Y/N) then press (Y) and press enter
9. Now a full format will start which remove write protection from USB Memory Stick.
Note:
Before removing USB from your computer, Always remove it safely by going into to my computer then right click on USB and click eject

That didn't work for me at all. I've also tried the following, which was also found on a few sites:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ CurrentControlSet\Control \StorageDevicePolicies This is simply a folder within a folder and so on? The final folder, the one you are looking for is called StorageDevicePolicies, and as the name suggests contains the settings for how the storage devices (USB flash) should behave. Here you right click on: ?WriteProtect? and select ?modify?. Here you set the value that appears to ?0″. Press enter and that?s it. (In other words: Default value: DWORD=0) Possible values are: 0 ? Disabled 1 ? Enabled Set the value to 0

That didn't work either. I tried to format through the command prompt but I still get the message "Cannot format. This volume is write protected."

I downloaded the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool and only got the message "Device media is write-protected."

Any ideas on what else I can do?

 

Round file it. Go buy one, they're not that expensive

 

Maybe wipe out the partition table on it? Then try to format it.