External USB HDD Read Only when not Bitlockered

Hi All,

Been a loooooong time since I've posted here.

Keeping ahead of times as always I'm upgrading a system to Windows 8.1 and found my external USB HDD is constantly prompting to be encrypted with Bitlocker.  If I refuse it's marked as read only and I can't use it.

After alot of digging around I finally found a solution:

Open regedit and look for the following:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FVE!RDVDenyWriteAccess
HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\FVE!RDVDenyCrossOrg

Set them to 0 and see if it gets you anywhere!!!  worked a treat for me.