Phantom Drive on PC

  • Thread starter Thread starter whitesmith
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whitesmith

Hope I'm posting this in the right place.

I bought an out-of-lease IBM NetVista PC with a 2.6 GHz processor, 512
GB of RAM, a 40 GB hard drive and a 16x CD drive. The hard drive is
configured as drive C. D is the CD drive. Everything seemed standard
at this point, but then I looked at Windows Explorer and it revaled a
DVD player configured as the E drive. I tried putting a DVD in the C
drive just to see if it could be read. No dice.

I'm wondering if the original owner (only God knows who!) might have
had a DVD in the box and removed it. Problem is, the PC came with a
fresh install of XP (albeit an old one with nothing but SP1 and some
IBM utilities). Can I just delete the phantom drive from
Administrative Tools without introducing instabilities or causing any
problems?

I appreciate any and all opinions and guesses.
 
Use Windows 'Device Manager':
Start/Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager/DVD-CD-ROM drives (click
on the + sign)
Right click on the drive and select 'Properties'.
Click on the 'Driver' tab and click on the 'Uninstall' button.
Shut down the PC and remove the ribbon cable from the CD or DVD drive.
Power up and reboot to Windows.
Now check that no device (CD or DVD drive) is listed, which it should not as
the drive is no longer connected.

Once again power down the PC and connect the ribbon cable.
Power up and Windows should detect 'New Hardware'.
Add it and let Windows find the best driver.

Now see if it's listed correctly.

JS
 
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