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