Partition seen as removable media device

Hi all,

I'm not quite sure how this happened. But I created a 25 gb partition and formatted it NTFS with a volume label of 'storage'

I created this partition using something called the HP Recovery Tools CD which allows you to run system restore from the hard drive if windows is unbootable, delete the hp recovery partition or create a data partition.

I have done this many times in the past and it's always worked fine. After it was done, it restarted and went into windows and finished installing hardware and wanted to reboot.

I do so but now that partition is seen as a media card reader (it has a media card reader icon). But it acts like a normal partition. I can store stuff on it and open things from it just fine. It's recognized as NTFS.

I have tried chkdsk on it, I've removed all the removable drives, hard drives and dvd drives in device manager along with all the controllers I could find and rebooted windows and let it install the hardware again.

I'm running windodws xp sp3. (It was preisntalled with sp1, so i installed the full sp2, rebooted, then the full sp3).

If anyone could help I'd really appreciate it.

Oh, and there is an actal media card reader on this computer and one of the media drives has the same icon as the hard drive partition, if that matters.

 

Check these two Registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

I have solved similar problems by deleting the MountedDevices key and rebooting to let Windows recreate it. If you elect to do that, first rename the existing key to MountedDevicesOLD or else export a copy for backup safety. I have performed this procedure many times on XP systems and believe it to be safe but it's always a good idea to have current backups.

 

Not only did this fix the icon issue, but it also put the partition letter back where I wanted it. I'm assuming because one value deletes the icons and one deletes the mounted drive info. Works perfectly, thanks. I'll be sure to save this info in case I need it in the future.

 

Don't forget to delete the renamed keys, if you did it that way. It tends to get confusing later if you leave them.

FYI, I always export the Mounted Devices key and keep it as a backup for the occasional time when I muck things up (at which I excel). The backup is especially useful if you have renamed your drives contrary to the system default.

It's amazing how much unnecessary information gets into that key over time. I marvel that it doesn't usually cause problems.

All the best,

Dude