BleepingComputer.com: Please Help - Access Denied On Removable Storage (permissions?)

I booted up my computer today and found to my surprise, that my devices with removable storage no longer work. My dvd-rom icon has a nice circle with a slash over it. My usb stick drive gives me a "G: is not accessible access denied" error when I try to open it.

I'm guessing what caused this. Yesterday, I enabled the "Stereo Mix" option on my sound card. (Vista disables this feature to make the recording industry happy, I suppose.) That's the only change I've made to my computer. Sadly, disabling the feature doesn't help. Perhaps Vista blocks access to your removable media if you enable your computer to record it? Wouldn't surprise me.

Checking the security properties tab informs me that I "do not have permission to view or edit this object's permission settings." It is also unable to display the device's "owner."

I don't have a backup point I can restore to.

Help me

I'd suggest a few, free, online malware scans to see if you've picked up a bug. I saw two of these at work today.

Here's a list:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com
http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan/
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml
http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp
http://onlinescan.avast.com/
http://ca.com/us/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

<links compiled on 02/14/2008>