Mystery Drive

Troops:

I open WINDOWS EXPLORER and look at the listed drives. I see there is a
"CD drive F ". I do not have a CD drive. I do have a DVD drive and have purposely moved it to be as alphabetically removed from the rest of the drives and have assigned it as drive "R" and it is so listed.

I look at the drive situation by right clicking on
"My Computer" -> Manage ->Disk Management
There is no drive "F" shown.
If I then right click on the drive "R" with the intention of changing its drive letter there is no drive "F" shown to be available.

I open Partition Magic and see what it has to say. There is no drive "F" shown.

Where in the $%^&* is WINDOWS EXPLORER getting this drive "F" inofrmation and what might I do to eliminate this phantom drive?

David Favin

 

Have you installed:
Nero CD/DVD burning software?
Alcohol Burning software?
Daemon Tools?

Nearly any CD/DVD software anymore will create a virtual CD Drive.

Since you cannot partition CD drives, Partition Magic is not a good resource.

Start, Run, registry
Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
You should see an entry there. That is what Explorer is depending on for enumerated drive devices.

 

Wild Bill:

You certainly are busy with my problems. Actually things are pretty good aside from these two things with which we have been dealing. The mike problem is annoying and this one is just a mystery.

But I went to START->RUN and typed in "registry" I have never heard of that command. Do you really mean it for after doing this nothing happened? Do you mean regedit?

And once I get to see the registry entry can I eliminate it. What might I do?

David

 

I meant regedit, my apologies.

When you see the entry it is confirming that it is legitimate. You can delete the entry, after a File, Export, of the entire MountedDevices key.

However, if an application such as I suggested earlier has been run, the MountedDevices entry will be recreated by the Logical Disk Manager, called during the final stages of boot by NTLDR, just prior to passing control to the XP kernel.

I would check Add/Remove Programs to see if a virtual drive software has been installed.

I would Start, Run, devmgmt.msc, expand the CD Drive entry, and right click on the entry, Properties. Look at the driver tab for a clue as to what software installed the drive.

 

Wild Bill:

This gets ever more interesting. I am telling you in WINDOWS EXPLORER there is a "CD drive F" listed. I just rechecked.
When I go into the registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_\SYSTEM\MOUNTED DEVICES
there are DosDevices A,C,D,E,G,H and R but no "F ".

in DosDevices1 there are C and D. Still no "F "

Now what coach?

David

 

Does it say, exactly:
"CD Drive F "

or, does it say, exactly:

"CD Drive (F "

If it is the first, then it is a bad drive label and can be fixed.

 

Wild Bill:

WINDOWS EXPLORER lists it as
"CD Drive (F "

Would you expect it to be easy? Of course not.
I await your sagacious reply

David

 

In My Computer, can you right-click the drive, Properties, and see a property sheet?

And if so, click Hardware, and ignoring your known drives, is there a strange hardware entry?

 

QWild Bill:
Thanks for these prompt responses.

When I got to the Device Manager thru MyCOMPUTER->PROPERTIES I checked all entries and found nothing strange. Under
DVD/CD ROM DRIVES
TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-H553A
All the other entries seem to be wha is expected.

David

 

This drive is actually the Samsung SH-W163A

As you know, XP does not come with native support for DVD, only CD optical drives.

I suspect you have an odd interaction with whatever DVD software you have installed, the drive firmware, and XP.

You can:

. ignore it.
. Flash the firmware to its newest release: http://www.toshibaer.com/firmware/index.php?path=TS-H553A/

and after a reboot uninstall any burner or other CD/DVD spftware.

Reboot and test again.

Then if all is clear, reinstall the CD/DVD software and see if it repeats.

Essentially what is going on is that your drive, as far as XP is concerned, is showing two Vendor IDs through its firmware. One is for a DVD drive, the other is for a CD drive. This is harmless, but the firmware update will fix this and other niggling issues.

When the Plug and Play enumerator gets two VEN_IDs returned to it, it searches through \Windows\inf for the best matching driver match.

You are getting two matches, because the drive firmware is returning two VEN_IDs when PnP makes a request for information.

 

Bill:

OK. I'll go the educational way and try and learn something here. I did not install the DVD. It just came with the Dell computer along with all the other garbage software included.

I downloaded the recommended "flash" software. I have never flashed anything and am not familiar with the process. I need instruction as to how this "flash" is performed.

Then comes the uninstall question. Is it sufficient to run the uninstall through the Device Manager? I feel comfortable in disconnecting the DVD but its a pain in the $%^&*() to take the installation apart. I'd like to avoid that.

David

 

The only "uninstall" I discussed was software. This would be through Control Panel, Add/Remove. You should not need to do anything with Device Manager.

Most flashes are done by downloading a floppy image. Check the details, as Dell likely allows a flash to be done from the hard drive.

If the flash is inappopriate, the Dell software will tell you so.

If you are on a laptop, use AC power.

Never interrupt a flash. Pray your power does not fail. Pray if AC power fails your batteries have a reasonable charge.

You are now in a position to know more than I. Run the flash download, and follow carefully the instructions found within.

 

Wild Bill:
Indeed this was an item in which I did learn something.
Here goes.
I installed, a while back, a program called UltraISO. This program takes a protected disk and makes an ISO copy of it. In doing so it creates a virtual disk. One takes the data on the virtual disk and uses that to make a copy.
But the virtual disk does appear in WINDOWS EXPLORER but not in the DEVICE MANAGER.

This is the source of my mysterious Drive F listing in WINDOWS EXPLORER.

David Favin

 

See post#2 in this thread.

But you are mistaken that there is no evidence in Device Manager:

. You will see under RAID controllers a virtual controller
. You will see an entry under System Devices that represents the virtual raid controller software