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Non-existent drives showing up in Explorer

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jneiberger

Technical User
Jan 21, 2005
1,791
US
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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.

 
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.
 
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.
 
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