Mystery Drive Q…
After a good deal of head scratching, we were able to fix this issue. In one instance, this problem was caused by the install of Office 2010, if this is what in fact led you to this article, you’re in for a good deal more head scratching, to the point of a bleeding scalp. Another issue we encountered with roots in our Office 2010 install, was that subsequent attempts to install programs, even unrelated programs, led failed installs. We were able to track this problem to multiple registry keys having permission errors. So in essence, this caused the registry keys to become unchangeable in the eyes of the “Trusted Installer Service”. In one case it even led to the reformatting of an entire system.
OK, now for you’re silver lining. The good news is, we did succeed in resolving a few of these issues. But relistically, if you have registry key permission errors, registry damage has been done. In which case a system restore may be your only hope. Having said that, any comments related your efforts with a similar repair would be greatly appreciated by all.
So lets get started. If in fact your issue is Office 2010 related, than the problem most likely relates to “Application Virtualization” which is a component of Office 2010. Specifically their tool to “Create a Portable Office 2010 Flash Drive”, which was used to create a portable 2010 usb drive on one of our machines.
In any case, our first suggestion would be to download and run Ccleaner. Run both the cache cleaner and the registry cleaner in “Ccleaner”. Normally we’re not big fans registry cleaners, but Ccleaners pretty tame and very user friendly. And always remember to set a restore point, as well as backup your registry.
Our first attempts at a repair were to delete the keys stored at
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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MountedDevicesAs well as various other locations. But attempting to manually delete the related registry keys only remove the drive temporarily. After a system restart, the drives would reaper.
Next we installed “Application Virtualization”. The goal here was to try to overwrite bad registry keys, with ones from the installer. Once the programs installed we suggest that you restart your machine. After restarting the computer, remove the program using “Programs and Features”. Run Ccleaner again, registry and cache, restart, and let us know if this fixed it.
If that doesn’t work, another method we used was installing Daemon Tools. Again with the hopes of over writing bad registry keys. We used DAEMON Tools Lite. There was a point in time when the use of this program was a horrible idea, and was like computer suicide. But we’ll admit that their product has come a long way. The installer seemed to do a pretty fair job of cleaning up after itself, leaving very few stray registry keys, and program folders behind.
If all else fails there’s always the Microsofts Office Removal Tools. This should uninstall every trace of office from you’re system, and in most cases is a viable option. Sadly, in the case of the most damaged machine we serviced, the shear volume of locked registry keys forced us to reinstall the OS.
After Thought
In our dealings with this issue, we came across a few computers with the same mystery drive. Investigating these issues further revealed recent installs of a disc utilities. In one instance a recent failed removal of UltraISO caused the issue. Normally UltraISO is a fantastic product, we ourselves use it on a regular basis with no problems whatsoever. In more than one instance, this problem could have been avoided by the user simply uncheaking the option to install “UltraISO’s Drive Emulator”. But more often than not, users neglect to read through a product installers options. In fact, this is where users tend to install programs labeled as “Adware”. In the case of one machine, a user left the option to install “UltraISO’s Drive Emulator”. Normally this is a simple thing to disable through UltraISO’s options menu, as well as something that’s removed during an “Uninstall”. Unfortunately our clients machine became infected with a virus, and during our clients efforts at a self-repair, UltraISO became damaged to the point that registry entries were orphaned.
So basically, if your having this issue, review your program files to be sure something similar isn’t whats causing your headaches. A few programs we’ve seen cause similar problems are, Daemon Tools, UltraISO, MagicDisk/MagicISO, Alcohol 52%, Circle Virtual, to name a few. In most instances the aforementioned programs are extremely safe, and very reliable, and for the most part safe. But in rare instances, they have been known to cause system faults such as mystery drives, and CD/DVD drive faults.
As always, good luck in you repair efforts. We hope this info was helpful.