Non-existent drives showing up in Explorer

[jneiberger]

I'm not sure when this began, but I first noticed it just a few days ago. I have one internal HD, an external HD, a Bluray drive and a CD/DVD drive. Those have always shown up correctly in explorer. But starting sometime in the past few days, I've also started to see an HD-DVD drive and sometimes an additional CD drive. I have absolutely no idea why those are appearing. They're not real drives, so I'm stumped.

Any idea how to figure out what those are and get rid of them?

 

[vanka25]

Have you installed any software that comes with virtual optical drives? Something like Daemon Tools, Power ISO, etc. You may have installed software that, unknown to you, installed a virtual drive.

 

[jneiberger]

Oh, actually, I installed both of those at one point, but I thought I had uninstalled them.

[checking...]

Ah, PowerISO is still installed. I'll uninstall it and see if that does the trick.

 

[jneiberger]

Okay, I uninstalled PowerISO but the HD-DVD player is still appearing. I guess it's not hurting anything to have it there, but I'd rather get rid of it.

 

[jneiberger]

I discovered that the device model names were rather cryptic, but I did figure out which "hardware" device that was and I disabled it in Windows. Now that I know for sure which it is, I'll just uninstall it from device manager.

 

[BadBigBen]

and if I am correct, then they will reappear once again...

certain (copy) programs install VIRTUAL DVD/CD Roms, e.g. Alcohol 120%, NERO, UltraISO, etc... and my assumption is that you have one or more or similar programs installed...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[jneiberger]

I did. I had PowerISO installed. I used it once and thought I had uninstalled it. I uninstalled it and then disabled the virtual drive.