How do you password protect a Sandisk Cruzer Micro USB 2.0 Flash Drive & how do you use the U3 & what is U3?

Howdy randy and welcome to DAL. I have one of these sticks, but to address your question I had to plug it into my wife's XP laptop since I run Linux. U3 is the software program installed in your USB stick. It is used for everything from accessing folders, to ejecting your USB drive, to setting up your password protection. I never set up a password on mine so bear with me on this. Click on the red icon cruzer. Whats funny is while I was typing this, San disk informed me it had a updated version of the launchpad, so I went ahead and installed it first. Anyways, click on the red icon. After lauchpad opens click on settings. Then click on U3 launchpad settings. On the left hand column is security. Click on the button enable . The next screen that comes up will be your password screen. It is pretty self explanatory and you should be fine from there. I don't use the password function because all my files are ext3 Linux files so Windows users can't access them. The U3 program is very useful, and if you don't like it, there is a option to uninstall it also. BUT you will lose the password protection feature of the program also so I recommend not doing that. Hope that answers your question.

By the way, forgot to mention when getting ready to eject, click on the red cruzer icon again and use the eject button on the bottom. San disk U3 does not like to be ejected using your eject hardware icon in bottom of taskbar. So always use the U3 eject function.

I don't have any red icon. Maybe I need to install or something? It didn't come with any instructions, so I'm in the dark!

Go to my computer and open it up. The San Disk drive should be listed there after you cd or dvd drives. Is there a question mark on the drive icon?

No question Mark.

then open up the drive by right clicking icon and you should see a U3 folder. Right click U3 folder and select launch U3. That should start the launchpad running.

When I right clicked on th U3 Icon I selected Auto play. The light on the SanDisk flashed a few times but nothing happened that I could see on the screen.

Well then, that is not looking so good, is it. That light on the USB stick should have lit up the minute it was plugged in and stayed lit. I would unmount it by using the little remove hardware icon on bottom right of lower taskbar. After it says it is safe to remove, I would try it in another usb port on your computer and see if things work like I said they should. If not, it sounds like your USB drive is borked and if you can exchange it for a new one then do so. San Disk is pretty good on warranties on their products.

OK-it is working like you said about the light coming on when I plug it in and the remove hardware icon etc. Now about the rest-the launch U3. I can't find that.