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

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?

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

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.

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?

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/sys.../Autoruns.mspx

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.

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.

[idi]

Dear Martin / Sniper:

That was great, I had the same problem... and solved without Uninstalling the Ultraiso... based on your solution... I found this:

I went to the Ultraiso "options" "configurations" and under the "virtual unit" row number of units: selected: "not found" insted the "1" that it had.


I hope this complement that solution for others.-

Regards,

PS: Thanks to Mark L. Ferguson also, because he also helped to us very well with his initial guide.-

[rwhaller42]

You guys saved me a lot of pain! My problem WAS ISO something (I forget the exact name). Uninstalling it fixed things. Ironically, I used the darn program only once some time ago... Good lesson in getting rid of things you don't really need!
BTW, I was running V***, not XP. The system came that way and by the time I wanted to roll back to XP, I had too much junk to move without a LOT of effort.

Rich

[eddyq]

If you are using a MagicJack then that will create one phantom CD and one phantom USB device.

[hkb]

Though a bit late, this topic helped me locate the problem.

Mine was with PowerISO. Even though I had no virtual drives mounted I was
still seeing that extra cd drive! This drove me crazy. I uninstalled any &
everything that could even remotely cause this. But no go.

Finally I found that even though the virtual drive was disabled or not mounted,
there was another pull-down menu for the number of virtual drives you would
want. I had this set at 1, and never gave it a 2nd thought as virtual drives
were not active. Oops! By setting 'Set Number of Drives' to disable (0), the
extra cd promptly erased itself.

Goes to show how a simple secondary setting has major impacts ( to me).

note: I notice this falls under Windows XP Support, well it holds true for all
versions of Windows. I can vouch for both XP, & 7, 32 & 64 bit, both OS's.

Great forum....
HKB