Extra CD drive showing in Explorer, but does not exist.

[sniper]

CD Drive F is showing as a 3rd drive in Explorer, but in device manager there
are only 2 drives showing. What is causing this phantom CD Drive to show up?

I have found another similar post where MVP Glen said..

Click Start>Run, type: cmd
Click OK
At a command prompt, type the following command , and press ENTER:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
Still at the command prompt, type the following command, and press ENTER:
start devmgmt.msc
When Device Manager opens, click View> Show hidden devices.
Remove any entries that exist for the phantom CD drive under the DVD/CD-ROM
Drives category.
Close Device Manager and reboot.
Does that help?
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+


I did this, deleting 2 greyed out drives that were showing but CD Drive F
still remains. Can anybody help please?

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

The CD device Properties in device manager should have a checkbox to 'disable
this device'. If this removes one of the other drives, instead, you probably
have some confusion in drive letter assignment. Open diskmgmt.msc and try
changing the drive letters of the drives.

 

[sniper]

Hi Mark, I tried disabling both visable drives as suggested, the phantom CD
Drive F remained on it's own in Explorer, so apparently no confusion there. F
is not showing in device manager of course.

I uninstalled Nero and In-CD, made no difference. F Drive properties gives
no clues either as to it's origin. Any other thoughts?

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

I think it might be worth looking for a 'virtual' drive, created for some app
you run, or perhaps even some Malware you had, and removed. It's going to
have to be in 'startup' somewhere. The best app I know for that is Autoruns,
but the startup tab of MSConfig.exe might show it too.

AutoRuns for Windows v8.61:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/Autoruns.mspx

 

[sniper]

Mark, I had a look in msconfig and also installed Autoruns, but to be honest,
it looks a bit complex for me and searching through everything there, I
couldn't find anything obvious. Possibly, I'm not techie enough to spot any
offender in there. Thanks for your help anyway.

Regards, Martin.

 

[sniper]

Mark, I did a bit of digging for things that might create virtual drives and
came across a likely suspect, a copy of UltraISO which on closer inspection
looked like it had 1 virtual drive. Uninstalled it and my CD Drive F has now
disappeared. Lovely job.

Many thanks for your help anyway buddy. Martin.

 

[ju.c]

Please don't delete previous posts, thanks.