Multiple Drives

Fidelis

I don't know what's causing it, but from time to time today, a pair of mysterious drives have planted themselves on my computer.
When I go into Explorer, there they are, two 'W' drives with an icon that looks like the Wordpad one. I can't access them and I know they don't exist on my HD, but what could be causing them ?
I'm using W98SE and my HD isn't partitioned.

yankinlk

virus?

Supercell

There in safe mode? (hit f8 a few times after your manufactures splash screen on post)Also are they there in dos, same f8 thingy, choose command prompt.

[This message has been edited by Longfield (edited 14-07-2001).]

Fidelis

Checking to see if they are there while in Safe Mode would be quite hard seeing as though the drives only seem to appear at total random, I've rebooted my sytem a few times today but I've only seen them twice. I performed a CHKDSK in DOS and my total memory was 651,264kb, isn't this number associated with viruses ?
I'm also experiencing weird monitor problems, but that has probably nothing to do with it.

Fidelis

Oh dear
It happened again, shortly after I made my previous post here. Here's what it looks like in Windows Explorer.



I'm kinda worried, can anyone shine any light on the situation ?

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Nil Desperandum

Supercell

you notice printers vanished on the second pic? Tried uninstalling all printer software? Probably off the mark, but have seen phantom drives in win98 before, and they usually had nothing to do with viruses.Try msconfig, on the general tab, choose "selective startup", disable autoexec.bat and config.sys, in the startup tab disable anything outside of the usual windows stuff.(ie non ms applications)

PhilipMarlowe

http://www.annoyances.org/cgi-bin/ce-discussion_show/win98_archive20?n951661153

and if you dont feel like clicking the link...
[question] Subject: Two "W" Drives after IE5.01 Install

I've installed Windows 98SE onto a clean/formatted hard drive and then upgraded IE to IE 5.01. When I empty the Recycle Bin", two (2) "W" Drives appear in Explorer. Any Help / Solutions?

[Answer] I've experienced this once or twice as well. When I clicked on the the new mystery drives I got a "Not Ready" error message, but they were otherwise harmless -- just an oddity. Hit F5 and they'll disappear.

...or something™

Kali

yeah as said above its nothing to worry about.

always happens to me when I'm using certain apps, usually outlook express/ netscape and corel at the same time.

press F5. problem solved.

SantaHoe

Yeah, that happens to me sometimes too.
It's always sorted after a refresh though (F5).

Stephen

I have a problem with phantom drives in win98 as well. I'm dual booting 98 and 2k, and for some reason they assign the drives different letters. In win2k it is as follows:

A: Floppy
C: IDE HD [ win 98 installed ]
DVD
E: CDRW
F: SCSI HD [ win2k installed ]
G: Zip Drive

In win98 it is as follows:
A: Floppy
C: IDE HD [ win 98 ]
SCSI HD [ win2k ]
E: SCSI HD [ a duplicate of the scsi disk ]
F: DVD
G: CDRW
H: Zip drive

The fake duplicate scsi HD in win98 is fully functional too. Its just an annoyance which seems to make no difference to the system. Why 2k and 98 named the drives in different orders I do not know.

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- Munch