How To Delete Virtual Drives After Software Uninstallation
I have tested a variety of virtual device creator programs in the past. Programs like OSFMount, TotalMounter, Gizmo Drive or Virtual Clone Drive are just some of the applications that I have reviewed. One of the problems that I encountered was the fact that virtual CD or DVD drives remained available on the system after uninstallation of the software that added them to the system.
While that is more of an aesthetic issue it is still something that could be problematic, for instance when trying to access media inserted into a drive (finding the right drive).
I never really bothered to look into the issue. Today's article on Unlock For Us addressed the issue which made me address it here on Ghacks as well.
It is not possible to quickly distinguish physical and virtual optical drives in Windows Explorer, unless you have renamed drives to reflect that or by digging deeper into the configuration settings.
Uninstalling Virtual Drives
Here is how you remove virtual drives under Windows so that those drives do not longer appear under My Computer, Windows Explorer or other software that makes use of optical drives.
Open the Device Manager with Windows-p and the selection Device Manager from the sidebar menu. Locate DVD/CD-ROM drives in the listing and expand the selection.
It is sometimes possible to spot virtual drives right away, for instance if they have virtual in their name. At other times it is not that easy. If you know the brand and model of your built-in DVD, CD or Blu-Ray drive you can select the other drives easily to uninstall them. If you do not know those information, you could look at the drive type. A drive displaying SCSI for instance can be an indicator that it is a virtual drive, especially if your computer does not support that technology.
Right-click on the virtual drive and select either Disable or Uninstall from the menu. Disable will keep the device listed in the device manager but not on the system. Uninstallation on the other hand removes the driver from the system and thus the drive.
I suggest to disable drives if you are not sure if they are virtual or physical drives. Put a CD or DVD into your physical drive for identification purposes. Now disable the suspected virtual drive. Refresh Windows Explorer afterwards to see if you can still access the CD or DVD. If you can you have disabled the correct drive and can right-click it again to uninstall it.
Repeat the process for additional virtual drives if present until you have uninstalled all drives that you no longer use.
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Does this also remove any files on that drive? Not tech savvy here
I have done this, and drives where gone, but the space they used (about 10gb) never come back! What I would do?
i cant find the drive at all im on a mac i need help so badly i have lost over a million dollars and lost 2 businesses due to this hacking of virtual ZTE USB SCSI CD ROM MEDIA its insane noone has been able to help me ive spent thousands and lost so much money and been shoved into a mental hospital and injected with anti psychotics as noone believed me its been so horrible can someone help me and give me a report PLEASE +61400061952 they have 4 yrs of my information i have found s many files on my mac that are exec gemspec ics ccl all sorts of files about them stealing off me they have scared me at home and had something electrical spiking my house electromagnetic its been so bad ive been petrified
cd driver option not showingðŸ˜
I have problem with my drive which always startup when I turn on my computer.
That problem after I downloaded mobile huawei driver and automatic installed on drive F.
Thanks for your explanation, it’s work rightly for my computer problem.
I had a virtual CD ROM drive which was left with one exe file in it that my virus detector went nuts about and nothing I did could remove it, including all of the above. Finally I in desperation I hovered over it, right-clicked and selected and, poof! Gone.
thnx
Thanks, this helped me a lot.
Ok I finally found that a piece of software I had installed (UltraISO) was being responsible for that fake cd-drive, as the latter disappeared when I removed the former.
Another piece of software (PowerISO) would do similar too.
i just uninstalled power iso from the control panel.. will that be enough? i don’t even remember creating any virtual drives but i did play a downloaded game with the help of power and that was the only reason i downloaded it. will it be all gone with that method? i can still see a residue of the program in start menu. how do i remove from there?
I have the same problem as SHaul, the fake cd-drive only appears in Windows explorer and I can’t find a way to remove it. Btw, Anonymous’ suggestion doesn’t help either because the drive doesn’t appear in the admin tools either.
hallow to you, i opened the “dvd/cd-rom drivers” in the “device-manager”, but the virtual cdrom that i wanted to uninstall didnt appeare in the list……only my two physical dvd-rw drivers was in the list…..but in the window of “my-computer”, he shows the two real cdroms-burners (F) (G), and the virtual cdrom as cd-drive (H)……
so how can i get to this virtual cd-drive (H), and get rid of him forever?
thank you! – 2012-11-28 — SHaul
You can also remove the Drive Letter in Disk Managment from the Administrative Tools in your Control Panel. That removes the drive from explorer.
Interesting that OSFMount is now charging for their software – when they actually say in their readme.txt that it is based on open-sourced software at http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/
Using the original, I haven’t had any left over virtual drives :)