Mounted & removable drives not "dismounting" anymore

[Guest]

Hi all. WinXP is suddenly not removing or dismounting my USB flash drives or
mounted virtual drives.

VIRTUAL DRIVES -- When I dismount virtual drives, I get the message
"successfully dismounted", but the drive icon and letter are still there. If
I try to open this 'phantom' drive, I get an error message.

USB/FLASH DRIVES -- Even if I use Safely Remove Hardware, the drive
letters/icons remain visible. After inserting and removing flash drives a
number of times, my "My Computer" shows drive A,B,F,G,H,I,J,K etc. as all
active.

Rebooting is the only way to solve the problem and make the 'phantom' drives
go away.

I've never had problems with this before, and haven't made any changes that
could've triggered this. Is there maybe a registry change I need to make?

Any advice will be very much appreciated!

 

[Guest]

I've started having the same problem the past week. Could it be a problem
with a Windows XP update that was installed?
The only way I can get rid of this is in safe mode, but it recurs when I
boot normally.
Anyone else?

 

[Guest]

Well I solved the problem on My PC - it was an evaluation version of Spyware
Doctor. Once I uninstalled it the problem was solved.