Phantom local drive

Hi,

I've been fighting this one for some time and still haven't figured out what caused it or how to fix it. I have a P205 s-6287 Tosiba laptop, 4gb ram, windows 7 home premium 64-bit OS.

Under the Computer icon I have a phantom local drive (Q) showing up. If I click on it "it is not accessible", "access denied". I can't find it in Device Manager or Computer Management. I did find it in registry and deleted the key, but after a reboot it returns.

The only thing I can think of that I did different was I tried to access my card reader through a usb port with an adapter, but that didn't work. I then accessed the built in reader and it worked fine. Maybe I removed it without clicking on the safe to remove icon -- can't remember.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Don

Turn it off and pull the USB cable out,. Try another port,. then turn the drive back on.

Originally Posted by reghakr

Turn it off and pull the USB cable out,. Try another port,. then turn the drive back on.

Thanks, I tried your suggestion, no luck. It really isn't hurting anything, but I sure would like to fix it.

Thanks again for your suggestion.

Don

Win 7 is set by default to hide empty drives in the folders view options, maybe that is why you cannot see it.

In Device Manger, try showing hidden devices in the View menu.

Do you have any programs that might be adding virtual drives? What key in the registry did you remove to get rid of it? Is there anything in msconfig.exe startup tab to correspond to that key?

Originally Posted by Saltgrass

Win 7 is set by default to hide empty drives in the folders view options, maybe that is why you cannot see it.

In Device Manger, try showing hidden devices in the View menu.

Do you have any programs that might be adding virtual drives? What key in the registry did you remove to get rid of it? Is there anything in msconfig.exe startup tab to correspond to that key?

Here are the answers:
Registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SYSTEM, Mounted Devices, DOSDevices\Q

Nothing that I can see in the Startup tab that could be causing the problem.
Intel(R) Common User Interface X 3, MSE and Realtek HD Audio Manager

I use Paragon to take mirror images for backups.

Hope this helps...
Don

It is probably the Paragon software. Different utilities have different ways of watching your system.

Originally Posted by Saltgrass

It is probably the Paragon software. Different utilities have different ways of watching your system.

I'll uninstall znd reinstall Paragon and let you know what happens.

Thanks,
Don

Originally Posted by Saltgrass

It is probably the Paragon software. Different utilities have different ways of watching your system.

Exactly,. thats the problem

I don't think he really has a problem. I know Acronis installs some pretty heavy devices in the Device Manager, so I bet Paragon is just doing its normal thing.

II.m suree you hears this before that I like GParted.

If you say for instance,. you have a 500A GB drive,. how much can you shrinkl that main paririon down to in Windows?