Phantom raw drive of size 0 appears only in Windows Explorer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Vince C.
  • Start date Start date
V

Vince C.

Hi.

I have converted my laptop's Windows XP into a virtual machine for VMWare.
Don't know if it was the cause but ever since I have a phantom V: drive
that appears only in Windows Explorer. It looks like a Raw drive but its
size is zero byte!

It doesn't appear in the Storage management MMC snap-in. It doesn't appear
either when I type "subst" on the command line. It also has a red question
mark on it. When I want to change, say, the CDROM drive letter from the
Disk Manager MMC snap-in, the letter V doesn't appear in the list of
possible letters for the drive.

Does anybody know how I could get rid of that drive? BTW how are drive
letters assigned and from where can they be observed? Do they appear in
the registry?

Thanks in advance.
 
There are several programs that can create virtual drives. Nero, Daemon
Tools, and Virtual CD are just a few. Check System Properties->Hardware
Tab->Device Manager button. See if you have anything listed under SCSI &
Raid Controllers it may point to which program has created this.
 
Xandros said:
There are several programs that can create virtual drives. Nero, Daemon
Tools, and Virtual CD are just a few. Check System Properties->Hardware
Tab->Device Manager button. See if you have anything listed under SCSI &
Raid Controllers it may point to which program has created this.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your hints. I indeed have a hidden device, vmscsi, which probably
comes from VMWare conversion (VMWare uses virtual SCSI devices by default
and if I remember correctly I converted my virtual machine hard disk from
SCSI to IDE). I'll try removing it and see...
 
Xandros said:
There are several programs that can create virtual drives. Nero, Daemon
Tools, and Virtual CD are just a few. Check System Properties->Hardware
Tab->Device Manager button. See if you have anything listed under SCSI &
Raid Controllers it may point to which program has created this.
Click to expand...
Vince C. wrote:

Thanks for your hints. I indeed have a hidden device, vmscsi, which
probably comes from VMWare conversion (VMWare uses virtual SCSI devices by
default and if I remember correctly I converted my virtual machine hard
disk from SCSI to IDE).
Click to expand...

Removing vmscsi didn't get rid of the phantom drive. Besides I have
uninstalled vmware converter and all its components.

Is there really no way to check what driver/component/stuff/whatever that
drive is attached to or relates to?
 
If you are familiar with use of scripts then you can try the following. The
sample scripts don't format the data in a useful manner but I hope these are
useful enough.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/storage/disks/drives/stdvvb03.mspx?mfr=true
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/storage/disks/drives/stdvvb12.mspx?mfr=true
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/storage/disks/drives/stdvvb13.mspx?mfr=true
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/storage/disks/drives/stdvvb15.mspx?mfr=true
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/storage/disks/drives/stdvvb17.mspx?mfr=true
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/storage/disks/drives/stdvvb19.mspx?mfr=true
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/storage/disks/drives/stdvvb21.mspx?mfr=true
 
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