Disk Management no longer displays drive letters and displays 3 phantompartitions

Y

Yousuf Khan

I got a system with 4 internal hard disks and one external USB. It runs
on XP Pro SP3. Recently I had some problems with my external USB hard
disk, and it stopped working on my system. Eventually I figured out that
it was actually a power supply problem on the enclosure and had its
power supply replaced which fixed it. However, in the meantime, as I was
searching around for solutions I came across an article from Microsoft
that looked like it might help, and so I ran through the procedure.

A computer that is running Windows XP cannot detect a USB flash drive,
an Apple iPod, or an external hard disk drive
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925196

After running the Fix It wizard that came with the article, I believe it
removed my "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" registry keys, and after
rebooting, I noticed that there were three new partitions listed in My
Computer, J, K, and L. But these partitions were weird as they seemed to
be empty or unformatted. I tried to remove them from Disk Management,
but they don't show up within the partition list at all. And another
thing that doesn't show up in the partition list is the drive letters
associated with the partitions. They used to show up before alongside
the partition label, now it just shows the partition label and that's
it. I'm also not able to change drive letters or mount to a folder anymore.

I tried to delete the additional partitions from the registry tree by
following the following article about how to do it:

Change or Delete System Drive Letter via Registry to Remove Conflict USB
or FireWire Drive Letter » My Digital Life
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/...remove-conflict-usb-or-firewire-drive-letter/

But the phantom partitions just kept coming back after every reboot.

So I tried to put the UpperFilters and LowerFilters back into the
registry, but it hasn't helped. Now I think I know what the phantom
partitions might possibly be, after thinking about it a bit. They are
probably the partitions from my Linux dual-boot. The Linux boot is
divided into 3 partitions on a single drive in my setup. But the Linux
partitions have been coexisting with my Windows partition for a long
time and Windows has never tried to assign them drive letters before.

So basically, any ideas why the drive letters have disappeared from Disk
Management, while phantom drive letters have appeared in My Computer?

Yousuf Khan
 
Y

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf said:
But the phantom partitions just kept coming back after every reboot.

So I tried to put the UpperFilters and LowerFilters back into the
registry, but it hasn't helped. Now I think I know what the phantom
partitions might possibly be, after thinking about it a bit. They are
probably the partitions from my Linux dual-boot. The Linux boot is
divided into 3 partitions on a single drive in my setup. But the Linux
partitions have been coexisting with my Windows partition for a long
time and Windows has never tried to assign them drive letters before.

So basically, any ideas why the drive letters have disappeared from Disk
Management, while phantom drive letters have appeared in My Computer?

Yousuf Khan

Just an update to this problem, since I posted it originally, I have
solved the problem. My problem was that I was putting the UpperFilters
registry key into the wrong section of the registry tree. Once I put it
into the right branch, everything was fixed.

Yousuf Khan
 

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