Problems with removable drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mahy
  • Start date Start date
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Mahy

Hi there people,

whenever I plug a USB key into my winXP machine, it takes some drive
letter. (So far, it's okay) But when I unplug it (the safe way, of
course), the drive letter remains occupied and is visible e.g. via
Total Commander. The drive itself is naturally not accesible, just like
an empty CD/DVD drive. Moreover, it is not visible in Explorer, but it
clearly remains in the system. The next time I plug my USB drive, it
takes a different letter, and so on and so forth, until I reboot the
machine and the vicious circle starts over again. I mean, it's a real
bummer, please help me if you know what to do. Any help will be very
much appreciated. TIA

Mahy
 
Mahy said:
Hi there people,

whenever I plug a USB key into my winXP machine, it takes some drive
letter. (So far, it's okay) But when I unplug it (the safe way, of
course), the drive letter remains occupied and is visible e.g. via
Total Commander. The drive itself is naturally not accesible, just like
an empty CD/DVD drive. Moreover, it is not visible in Explorer, but it
clearly remains in the system. The next time I plug my USB drive, it
takes a different letter, and so on and so forth, until I reboot the
machine and the vicious circle starts over again. I mean, it's a real
bummer, please help me if you know what to do. Any help will be very
much appreciated. TIA

Mahy
Click to expand...

If the drive letter is visible in Total Commander but not in
My Computer or Explorer then this is probably a problem
with Total Commander: It fails to pick up the fact that you
have removed the flash disk. I suggest you try the Total
Commander FAQs.
 
Pegasus said:
If the drive letter is visible in Total Commander but not in
My Computer or Explorer then this is probably a problem
with Total Commander: It fails to pick up the fact that you
have removed the flash disk. I suggest you try the Total
Commander FAQs.
Click to expand...

That simply can't be true. Does TC do the letter assigning? Definitely
not! Even if I don't start TC at all, the USB drive takes a different
letter after unplug/plug. For instance, when I plug for the first time,
it takes letter F, then I unplug it and drive F icon disappears from
Explorer. But after next plugging, driver G, not E, emerges... I didn't
have such problem until I ran a clean winXP install. I used to have a
Czech OEM version, and now I use English winXP SP2 MSDNAA license. If
you know of such issue, please let me know.

Mahy
 
Mahy said:
That simply can't be true. Does TC do the letter assigning? Definitely
not! Even if I don't start TC at all, the USB drive takes a different
letter after unplug/plug. For instance, when I plug for the first time,
it takes letter F, then I unplug it and drive F icon disappears from
Explorer. But after next plugging, driver G, not E, emerges... I didn't
have such problem until I ran a clean winXP install. I used to have a
Czech OEM version, and now I use English winXP SP2 MSDNAA license. If
you know of such issue, please let me know.

Mahy
Click to expand...

TC does not assign drive letters but if it holds on to
a drive letter from disconnected USB devices then
Windows must assign a new drive. My prime suspect
is still Total Commander! If you cannot find anything
among its FAQs, disable it via msconfig.exe and
check if the problem still occurs.
 
Pegasus said:
TC does not assign drive letters but if it holds on to
a drive letter from disconnected USB devices then
Windows must assign a new drive. My prime suspect
is still Total Commander! If you cannot find anything
among its FAQs, disable it via msconfig.exe and
check if the problem still occurs.
Click to expand...

How on earth can TC hold on to a drive letter if it's switched off? It
doesn't run on the backgroud. Nonetheless, I did a few steps to
diagnose my PC:

1.) uninstalled TC
2.) cleaned the registry using RegMech
3.) rebooted the machine

guess what?
Yes, u're right, the problem persisted... TC was NOT the culprit. When
I right-click My Computer and select Manage, then Disk Management; only
one removable drive is present at a time. But if the drive is, say, K
and I wanna change the letter, options E - J are not available (they
should be), clearly indicating that system, not TC, holds on to those
letters.

Now does anybody have an idea? I'd be eternally thankful.

Mahy
 
Mahy said:
How on earth can TC hold on to a drive letter if it's switched off? It
doesn't run on the backgroud. Nonetheless, I did a few steps to
diagnose my PC:

1.) uninstalled TC
2.) cleaned the registry using RegMech
3.) rebooted the machine

guess what?
Yes, u're right, the problem persisted... TC was NOT the culprit. When
I right-click My Computer and select Manage, then Disk Management; only
one removable drive is present at a time. But if the drive is, say, K
and I wanna change the letter, options E - J are not available (they
should be), clearly indicating that system, not TC, holds on to those
letters.

Now does anybody have an idea? I'd be eternally thankful.

Mahy
Click to expand...

OK, I was wrong but it was worth a try. Your drive letters could
also be occupied by background tasks, e.g. by tasks invoked by
the Task Scheduler at startup time. I would run regedit, navigate
to HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices, delete every value higher
than D: and reboot the machine. This should give you an idea at
what point in time the letters get reassigned. While performing these
tests I would leave all non-Windows tools uninstalled in order to
keep the number of potential culprits at a minimum.
 
Hi,
I'm having the same problem for the last week for no apparent reason: When I
plug a USB drive (or card reader) and then gracefully disconnect it, windows
retains the drive letter and the next time it gets the next letter. When it
reaches Z - the drive is not visible. Reboot starts the process all over
again.
I have uninstalled all ghost drive from device manager - but they return
after every connection.
I have erased all mounted drives behind above my drives and CD-Roms from the
registry , as Pegasus suggested - but they keep coming back.
I have booted in safe mode and tried it there - it doesn't appear to happen
there.
But when I'm back in Windows it reoccurs.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

PS - I don't have TC
 
Well I solved the problem on My PC - it was an evaluation version of Spyware
Doctor. Once I uninstalled it the problem was solved.
 
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