Go to Device Manager to see if it shows up there.Victor said:I once had a CDR drive and a CDRW drive. Now I only have the latter.
The CDR drive still shows up in 'My Computer' etc and ties up a drive
letter of course. How do I remove it? I no longer need it and would
like to get rid of it.
Go to Device Manager to see if it shows up there.
If it does, uninstall it.
If not it will mean digging in the Registry.
Victor said:Thanks
Device Manager does not show it - at least I don't see it.
Same for Registry.
V
Ken said:During a cold boot start up, is there a search for IDE drives?
If you go into the BIOS setup, is the drive found and properly
listed? If it is not there and you save the bios settings, is it
still reported on the POST listing?
If you have removed or disconnected a drive it's not a matter
of first concern what is in the OS Registry, but what is being
detected by the BIOS. The BIOS should be updating the OS.
Luck;
Ken
That reminds me, if you set user IDE settings on the Bios insead of
auto-detect you can get weirdness if the hardware no longer matches
what the BIOS expects.
Victor said:The only IDE settings I see in the BIOS are the specific drives I have
(two HDDs and one DVDRW), all correct. In Device Manager there is a
second drive under DVD/CD-ROM Drives - what looks like might be my
SCSI card (PCI) that connects to my scanner. Could that be the
phantom drive?
Scsi cards withoud drives attached should just show up as scsi cards.
Never owned a scsi csanner. But if you had the card before you removed
the drive, and didnt have an extra drive then, I don't see why it would
be like this now.
Try disconnecting the scanner and yanking the card anyway to see what
happens.
Scsi cards withoud drives attached should just show up as scsi cards.
Never owned a scsi csanner. But if you had the card before you removed
the drive, and didnt have an extra drive then, I don't see why it would
be like this now.
Try disconnecting the scanner and yanking the card anyway to see what
happens.
The BIOS reports it is 'working correctly, by the way.
Victor said:Try this one on for size - I have two machines, one an AMD the other a
P4. Both WXP. I have had them for a while. At one time, I had two
CD drives in each machine, one each a CD, and one each a CDRW. I did
that to ease disk copying. Then I graduated to just two DVDRW drives,
one on each machine, and removed all the former CD drives.
Each machine has two HDDs, with multiple partitions each,
I just checked Control Panel on the second machine (not the one we
have been discussing), and guess what? I have an extra (?phantom?) CD
drive there also.
Now then, someone has said that the presence of an extra drive like I
have is not normal. Well, maybe so, but I find it strange then that
I have the same problem on both machines.
I feel sure that the extra drive exists because I physically removed
the second drives after WXP was installed, and that WXP simply has not
taken care of housekeeping to stay current with things.
Sure, I have, can, and will live with this extra drive dilemma, but it
do seem odd.
Thanks for everyone's interest.
Hmmm. Must be something in common. I know some hard drives have jumper
settings like, "master, force slave present" I wonder if something
like that was done on your CDs when your computers were first built. Or
if you removed the Master drive on the chain and didn't rejumper.
Check the jumper settings anyway. Set to master, then if no change try
cable select. make sure the drive is the on the last jump on the
ribbon.
Seems worth a try. If it doens't work, leave be if you have no other
symptoms.
Victor said:Thanks for response.
Both HDDs in both machines are configured as 'masters' for simplicity
(one primary IDE - one secondary).
Both DVDRW disk drives are now configured as 'secondary IDE slaves'
for simplicity.
Formerly the CDR and CDRW drives were both 'slaves', one on each IDE
channel, for simplicity.
As a sidelight, I have never used the HDD 'CS' jumper settings.
Since I have no other symptoms, I can and have left things alone. It
is just that I thought it was about time I 'cleaned things up'.
I guess not, huh?
V
So you tried changing the IDE settings in your BIOS setup to
show "None" for where this phantom CD could be attached,
and saved the settings on exit? And you still see it in your OS?
Do you see it in the POST display?
/Ken
Thanks for response.
Both HDDs in both machines are configured as 'masters' for simplicity
(one primary IDE - one secondary).
Both DVDRW disk drives are now configured as 'secondary IDE slaves'
for simplicity.
bon.
Masterless slave. May be an issue. Change both to secondary masters. An
your Intel macine, you'll have to change your secindary master side
setting back to "cdrom", or "auto" or you'll wonder why the setting
doesn't work.
bon.
Masterless slave. May be an issue. Change both to secondary masters. An
your Intel macine, you'll have to change your secindary master side
setting back to "cdrom", or "auto" or you'll wonder why the setting
doesn't work.
Victor said:I don't think I am reading this right. Let me try to explain again
what I had:
Primary Master --- Main hard drive - 1 partition 'C' - BIOS set AUTO
Primary Slave --------Nothing - BIOS set to NONE
Secondary Master - Data hard drive - several partitions BIOS SET TO
AUTO
Secondary Slave --- DVDRW drive BIOS set to CD
I changed it to:
Primary Master --- Main hard drive - 1 partition 'C' - BIOS set AUTO
Primary Slave --------Data hard drive - several partitions BIOS SET TO
AUTO
Secondary Master - DVDRW drive BIOS set to CD
Secondary Slave --- Nothing - BIOS set to NONE
The BIOS shows during boot:
Primary Master ----- My Primary Master HDD
Primary Slave ------- My Second HDD
Secondary Master -My DVDRW drive
Secondary Slave - - None
WXP's My Computer shows:
C ........ My Main HDD
D ........ My DVDRW drive
E ........ Phantom DVD drive
F ........ My Second HDD, Partition 1
G ...... My Second HDD, Partition 2
H ....... My Second HDD, Partition 3
etc
Any comments?
V
The hardware all looks ok, but XP is apparently confused. I'm in 2k at the
moment without a way to test your problem, but XP works the same for this as I
recall. Go into Disk Management (Right-click My Computer and select Manage).
Then selct Disk Manaqement. The phantom device should appear there in the top
right frame and you should be able to right-click and delete it. That's the
place to fix drive letters also in case you want a different lineup.
HTH
Bob
Victor said:Bob, I have been there before. I went there again, after reading your
reply. All that is there are the three drives - 2 HDDs and 1 DVDRW.
The so-called phantom drive is not there and was not there before.
Weird
Then force its hand. Assign (try to) one of the other devices (at least
temporarily) to the E: drive letter and see if Windows complains or if that
process clears the slate. The right-click "Rescan" on Disk Management might do
it also. You do need to be using an account with Administrative privileges for
these operations! In any case, the problem is in Windows and you have no
hardware problem showing that I can see.
Bob
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