Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations Rhinorhino on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Pc has a non valid drive in my computer..please help!

Status
Not open for further replies.

davdi77449

Technical User
Joined
Jul 4, 2004
Messages
5
Location
US
I'm working on a P3 Win Xp Pro computer with a few bugs and have now managed to straighten most of them out. I have one problem though that I'm losing too much time in and can't seem to fix. In the my computer screen there is an extra drive showing that is not a drive on this computer and does not function at all. The computer has 5 valid drives and then this invalid one. The icon for the drive has a question mark on it that's in a red circle. If you click on the drive it just says "G:\ refers to a location that is unavailable". If you click on properties it only has a General tab that says "Type: local disk" "File System: raw" and shows 0 bytes.

A quick rundown of the pc devices shows that everything is in order but no extra drive there. If anyone knows anything about this problem some help would be great! This pc is not on a network, is connected via DSL to the internet, and now everything seems to check out except for this which is unexceptable.

Thanks,
David77449
 
there is not tape streamer in there by any chance?

Marc
If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC!

How Do I Get Great Answers To my Tek-Tips Questions? See faq222-2244
 
It could well be a system restore partition.

Ignore it.
 
what cd/dvd burner prog is installed. it might be a virtual drive installed by that prog!
 
Hello marcs41, no it's not a tape streamer.
bcastner & Lemon13, you guys have the same thoughts I am having. It must be some kind of virtual drive but as for what I'm not sure. This particular system has Nero 6 Ultra Edition as well as Iomega Hot Burn Pro. The burner is an Iomega so I believe it needs the drivers that come with the Hot Burn program. The owner only uses the Nero program though. In any case he questions the seemingly non valid drive and want's to get rid of it. Now if I can only find it's source right?

Xp system restore is diabled in this machine and I personally don't care for it anyway. I prefer external system backups. I also forgot to mention the machine has Drive Image 7.0 on it "installed by the owner" as well as Ontrack's Easy Recovery Professional Edition.

Another case of too much software! I always do a physical backup before I really start to tear into things so I guess I can start deleting programs to find the culprit. I was sure hoping for an easier way though. Any other ideas please shoot them this way before I waste anymore time on this thing. I have the system working very well at this point and have no conflicts of any kind that I can find. The owner hacked the registry but that's all history now. Problem is I hate to give it back to him and tell him I can get rid of something that seems so simple!


David77449
 
Ok ,not a tape streamer (which can act as a raw device), so i must be that iomega one. If it is configure in the software to be able to write to on the fly, windows will handle that as a raw device too, but like you said, there are no drivers, so it does not know what it is.

Marc
If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC!

How Do I Get Great Answers To my Tek-Tips Questions? See faq222-2244
 
why not try msconfig and configure it NOT to start up various programs from which you may discover the program that creates this drive

assuming it is a virtual drive and not a virus

"Work to live, don't live to work"

"The problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes it shoots back"
 
right click drive, choose properties and there volume (in german datenträger). when i do this on my pc i get the error msg. no volume inserted.., the interesting thing here is on the bottom it says copyright ahead software.....
maybe this helps you ;-)
 
I suspect a conflict between Nero and Hot Burn.

Both likely are created virtual DVD/CD volumes, and both introduce new services. You should not need both programs. And the virtual drive(s) do cause some issues.

Start, Administrative Tools, Services, do you see a service introduced by Hot Burn?

And likely Device Manager will show some additions to your controller list to handle virtual CD Drives.

Your choice:

. clean this mess up, and start again with one program (I vote for Nero without virtual drives);
. just leave it alone.
 
Well I just got back from an eye care office where I've been working on getting their network bugs resolved. Must say I'm having better luck there than on this stupid pc and this virtual drive issue. I did try several things last night that some of you mentioned above but still can't really resolve the problem.

I used msconfig to try and get a run down of where the problem could be. Funny but the only thing that would stop the problem was to disable "Shell Hardware Detection" in services. After that boot the mystery drive was indeed gone!

Well I didn't want to leave this service disabled (though tempted) so I turned it back on and went to the device manager. I couldn't find any controller additions but for the heck of it I disabled the Iomega drive there. Next boot the drive was gone of course but better yet the dumb virtual drive was gone also! By now I'm thinking Iomega configuration all the way. Next step I removed Hotburn completely and even hacked the registry to get every bit of it I thought could be a problem. By the way it had added a couple of items to services but disabling them did not eliminate the virtual drive!

I ran all through Nero and really don't think the problem is there. The image drive is not even configured on it and even more strange I couldn't access this virtual drive with either program. Now I'm going back and forth, lol.

So time came for the next boot and I would see if the computer tried to install the drive. By the way it's an Iomega external cdrw-dvdrom ultra speed USB 2.0 drive.

On the boot it did pick it up and install drivers for it. Well I see no signs of Hotburn at all but in device manager it shows the good ol' Iomega drive once again and on top of that guess what came back with it? Yeah my friend, the virtual drive G.

I guess this is the bottom line at this point. I've already lost my butt on this restoration but had continued to work on the problem for two reasons. First to make the customer happy and since I had already taken a loss why not figure it out. In my mind a lesson learned is always worth the expense. Well most of the time anyway!

I'm going for one last effort. I'm going to uninstall Nero and see what happens. If that doesn't do it I'll give the guy his options as I see them. He can live with the stupid drive that he can't use showing up in the my computer screen, live with the "Shell Hardware Detection" disabled in services, or get rid of the Iomega drive altogether.

I sure appreciate all the time you guys or gals have taken trying to help me with this thing. I don't have a lot of time but plan to become more involved in this forum as I'm sure I can help others in many cases. If you have any other ideas just shoot. I'll check back here before I make the give up call to my customer! :(

David77449
 
Maybe a silly question, but are there any disk left in the CD drive(s) or the Iomega?
If so, remove them.
I found something about Nero writing a wrong CD format, an instead of having th CDFA it had the raw format.
Maybe worth checking?

Or, there is not a leftover from a Unix/Linux installed partition by any chance?
That, you could check with FDISK or in Computer Management.
Raw partitions are disk partitions that have not been formatted with a Windows NT® file system, such as FAT and NTFS

Marc
If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC!

How Do I Get Great Answers To my Tek-Tips Questions? See faq222-2244
 
If you want to cheat (as a last resort type of option) you could just hide that drive from Explorer. X-Setup-Pro has that option.

 
Hello again marcs41! Well I get this whether or not there is a disk in the drive. Also this particular pc has but 1 partition that includes the entire hard drive and the numbers match. With that in mind there are no traces of Unix/Linux or anything but NTFS. This is a customer’s computer and I didn't do the install but I've been through everything and know what I'm dealing with except for this one problem. I've never ran into this before is what is so surprising and I started working on computers a long time ago when dos ruled. I'm going to figure it out because it's killing me not knowing. I'm the kind of person who doesn't throw in the towel easily and I'll be damned if this is going to kick my butt. Well...........I think for now it's won the battle but the war isn't over.

Hello Linney! Well I tried your suggestion and it worked like a charm. The drive icon is gone (hopefully nothing left with it) and I think the customer will be happy now. I've spent enough time for now on this system so I'm done. I will try to simulate the problem on my pc when I get some extra time so I can work on it more.

Thanks so very much all of you. You guys rock!!!!


David77449




 
I am unhappy with the solution:
linney said:
If you want to cheat (as a last resort type of option) you could just hide that drive from Explorer. X-Setup-Pro has that option.

Uninstall Hot Burn by IOMEGA. Leave Nero.
Hot Burn from my memory installs a service, several odd device drivers, and creates a virtual CD drive.

At least Nero does not demand a new service entry.

One or the other but not both.
And certainly not the linney solution.

 
Did you check Device Manager in "safe" mode. You may be suprised how many "ghost" devices you may have. Some of those "ghosts" can cause configuration problems in normal mode.
 
I thought I made it pretty clear what type of er..."solution" I offered. But, if it gives respite and saves sanity, why not?
 
Virtual drives are also created with other 3rd party soft, the kind to 'emulate' a CD on your PC, maybe something like that active?

David, if you ever find out, let use know, you can see we are all intrigued.

Marc
 
might be useful

Device Manager
View
tick the "Show hidden devices" option



"Work to live, don't live to work"

"The problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes it shoots back"
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top