Phantom raw drive of size 0 appears only in Windows Explorer

[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.

--

Vince C.

[Xandros[_3_]]

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


"Vince C." > wrote in message
...
> 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.
>
> --
>
> Vince C.
>

[Vince C.]

Xandros wrote:

> 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.

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...

--

Vince C.

[Vince C.]

> Xandros wrote:
>
> 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.

> 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).

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?

--

Vince C.

[Sam Hobbs]

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


"Vince C." > wrote in message
...
> 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.
>
> --
>
> Vince C.
>
>