"Ghost" CD-drive in Windows Explorer, no physical drive existant, not removable

Hi everybody,

first of all, I want to apologize. I hate it when people register in a forum just to ask a question. But I really don't know where to turn anymore. I consider myself a very experienced Windows user and Administrator, but I encountered somewhat of a freak error. Either that, of my PC really is haunted:

I have a drive ghost on my pc. The Windows Explorer shows me a generic CD-drive as drive F:

This drive is otherwise nonexistant in the system: It doesn't show up in the disc management console, nor the device manager. I really do have two physical DVD drives, both up and working fine (drive G: and H.

My normal drive F: is a removable USB drive I use for backup storage. This device is now listed as drive I: ... it seems like Windows booted when this drive wasn't attached and put a generic, though inexistant CD-drive in its place. When the system was booted again while the drive was connected, it was put on I:, while the CD-drive remained on F:.

So far, I have been unable to remove this drive, because it doesn't show up ANYWHERE ELSE.

I also tried to change the drive letter of the USB drive back to F: in the disk management console, but although the console doesn't display a drive F: at all, it doesn't offer this F: as a free drive name.

I checked the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contol\Class\...) to see if I can find the faulty drive there, but all keys look the same to me... and I really don't want to fool around there while I have no clue what I am doing.

The Microsoft Support pages didn't help either, that's where I spent the last hour searching. There was one text which may be marginally relevant (#834241), but this one was fixed in SP2, which I have installed.

Oh, right, I use Windows XP Professional SP2 with autoupdate enabled.

I really hope somebody can help... many thanks in advance.

 

No. Neither in the device manager, nor in the disk management console.

And it isn't an emulated drive, either.

 

The ghost drive still exists and the USB drive is gone. The ghost drive still only shows up in the Explorer.

 

Does anybody else have an idea?

Also, does anybody know how Windows distributes drive letters, aside from the Management Console? If I could just change the USB drive to "F:" again, it would be a great help.

Maybe a commandline "kill" command to force removal of a drive letter?

 

All mounted devices are listed in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Try deleting the entry for DosDevices\:F and reboot and see if it is recreated.

You can also delete the corresponding \??\Volume line - you'll have to match the Data number.

If your XP install sees itself as the C: drive then you can't do any harm by even deleting the entire Mounted Devices folder, as it will be recreated on reboot. If your XP is any other letter than C: then be very careful of what you alter in this registry key, as you can kill Windows.

Do you have a card reader or similar that might be causing the problem.

 

Ok, this helped a bit, but it is getting kinda weird:

First of all, there was no Entry for DosDevices\:F ... although the drive showed up in Explorer. I have deleted the whole folder though, and rebooted. The drive letters were mixed up and I was able to assign F: again to my USB drive ... but the CD drive is still there, now as drive E:. Nothing else changed, though.

 

When you delete the whole key all devices are reassigned new drive letters in the standard default MS order "“ the same as Win9x "“ that’s why your previous assignments were reshuffled. It’s also why you will have a problem if Windows is anything other than C, as the default order is always to make the boot drive C, so if your Windows were something else and it gets changed to C, then required files can’t be found during bootup.

Because you cleared all current assignments the new E drive can’t just be a remnant from some glitch. Something must have been detected on bootup. If it’s not a piece of hardware, then I don’t know, perhaps network shares or a virtual drive?

 

Thanks, everybody. My system now works again ... here's what it was:

After knowing that the drive still showed up even after deleting the reg keys, I tried to figure out where it came from. I had disabled and closed all emulation software, but it seems like PowerDVD somehow fracked up. The number of emulated devices was 0, but one by one I reenabled emulation and shut if off again... and then the ghost drive was gone. So it really wasn't a Windows error.

But I bet I wouldn't have found it without your help. Many thanks again!