My computer is recognizing a drive that dosen't exist.

[guthro777]

The only drives I have are an SSD, HDD, and DVD drive. Now there is another drive showing up even though there isn't one. I haven't recently plugged in a thumb drive either. There is a question mark on the drive icon. When I try to open it I get a "location is not available" error.

Why is it doing this and how do I get rid of it?

 

[BlackOutCrisis]

Sounds like something created a virtual drive. Might want to check for viruses.

[Bradleywh]

Open disk management you can do this by going to start>computer>right click>manage. Then on the left under the navigation pane Under storage click on disk management and post a screen shot of that. Or just tell me if the local disk is appearing there too.

[guthro777]

Open disk management you can do this by going to start>computer>right click>manage. Then on the left under the navigation pane Under storage click on disk management and post a screen shot of that. Or just tell me if the local disk is appearing there too.

No it doesn't show up in disk management.

[Bradleywh]

Make sure that you do a Virus check on your computer then. I would also recomend you open cmd as a admin ad type sfc /scannow. This will check windows for any errors. If it picks up some errors restart and see if the problem still exists.

[guthro777]

Okay I'm doing both now and I will update when they are done.

[Bradleywh]

Also do you have Microsoft Office 2010 installed? sometimes that brings up a unknown drive but normaly with the letter "q" or "r"

[guthro777]

Also do you have Microsoft Office 2010 installed? sometimes that brings up a unknown drive but normaly with the letter "q" or "r"

No, I don't have Office.

[Bradleywh]

Can you Open device manager. By going to Control panel> device manager. Then look under disk drives, you should see the name of your SSD the name of you HDD and any USB drives plugged in. Does drive "E" appear in here? also check under the DVD/CD-ROM drives section.

[guthro777]

I should have mentioned this earlier, but I didn't think about it. Yesterday windows defender detected a trojan.

 

Okay so the virus scan showed nothing. And there were no errors.

[guthro777]

Can you Open device manager. By going to Control panel> device manager. Then look under disk drives, you should see the name of your SSD the name of you HDD and any USB drives plugged in. Does drive "E" appear in here? also check under the DVD/CD-ROM drives section.

No E doesn't appear there..

[BlackOutCrisis]

What are you using as a antivirus?

[guthro777]

What are you using as a antivirus?

Windows Defender

[Bradleywh]

Right. Now this is going to take a little more thought then. You will have to go into the registry to try and fix this problem. Device manager doesn't show all of the devices listed. Microsoft hide some by default. You will have to go into the registry and complete the following steps:

 

Step 1

 

[start] [Run] [Regedit]

Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment
Data Type: REG_SZ [string Value] // Value Name: DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES
Modify/Create the Value Name [DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES] according to the Value Data listed below.
Value Data: [1 = Show Devices / 0 = Hide Devices]
Exit Registry and Reboot

 

Step 2

 

This will now allow you to see all of the devices under device manager. Under Disk drives you need to delete all of them except your SSD and HDD.

 

Then reboot your PC. 

 

This should fix your problem. If it doesn't then its beyond me. If your running windows 8 you could try and do a PC refresh. Or you may just have to re install windows.

[guthro777]

So I decided to try to reboot and see if that would help. It is still there but the icon changed. It looks similar to the Power ISO icon which I just downloaded yesterday and have yet to use. Also it now says insert disk when I try to open it instead of the error I got before.

 

Is this part of the Power ISO software?

 

 

[BlackOutCrisis]

Windows Defender

First download Avast free and do a full scan then do a boot time scan, that should actually tell you if you have any viruses.

[Bradleywh]

Yes this is part of POWER ISO. It allows you to mount a iso without the need of burning the image to a disk.

[guthro777]

Yes this is part of POWER ISO. It allows you to mount a iso without the need of burning the image to a disk.

 

Yeah... I feel stupid, but happy I got it figured out.

 

Thanks for all your help. Even though I didn't really have a problem. Haha :lol:

[luke1078]

Yeah... I feel stupid, but happy I got it figured out.

 

Thanks for all your help. Even though I didn't really have a problem. Haha :lol:

Select the best answer to help other people out please :p

[Bradleywh]

Yeah... I feel stupid, but happy I got it figured out.

 

Thanks for all your help. Even though I didn't really have a problem. Haha :lol:

Its all good. I should have had that in my mind too :P 

 

Always happy to help