Rooted Galaxy S5; how can I connect to the PC as a mass storage device, not as PMP or camera?.

Dark Penguin

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Aug 21, 2011
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My carrier is Sprint and I currently have an S5 running rooted stock 5.0 (BOG1 build). Evidently, even when rooted, this version level of Android clamps down on some of the freedom we used to have regarding the placement of apps and their data. So I want to take a careful look at my internal SD card to see what I might be able to clean up there.

But here's the rub. No matter how I fiddle about with my PC's Autoplay settings, when I connect the phone to it and view the internal or external cards, they are ALWAYS defined as portable media players. Windows Explorer permits only a limited choice of column options in this display mode, and I can't get to the attributes I really want, like file size and a full datestamp, rather than just stupid useless ones like "Year" and "Duration". Similarly with columns like "Track Listing" and "Artist"--even if they were populated, which they usually aren't, they wouldn't be of any use to me in Explorer. The only place I want to be told this kind of information is in a media player, when I'm actually using it as a media player. In fact, I'd like very much for the phone to look like a simple flash drive when I plug it into the PC. Or "drives", since I recall past times with previous handsets when both SD cards would appear in the top level Explorer window as MSDs in their own right, with no intermediary drive or device representing the phone.

Is there any way I can go back to that? Force my computer to "forget" my S5 and reintroducing it, which would presumably let me redefine how I want the computer to handle the device?
 

nahoku

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Jan 26, 2013
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You can use usbdeview to make your PC forget your phone. The program doesn't need an installation and supports all versions of Windows except, Win98, ME, and Windows10. It will list all USB devices that have ever connected to your PC. Just find every entry for your phone in the list and delete them. When you connect your phone the next time, Windows should detect it as a new device.

When you connect your phone to the PC, doesn't it give you an option to connect as MTP?
 

nahoku

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Jan 26, 2013
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The guy behind Nirsoft has been doing Windows utilities for a very long time. Very excellent stuff!
 

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