Help - bad USB flashdrive caused a problem

Skofab · 06 Nov 2017

Morning everyone.
have just noticed that having taken a USB flashdrive ( which I found could not be written to or read ) - I consigned this to the rubbish bin.

A little later I found that an additional 'hard drive' entry was indicated in the 'This PC' window, which now shows a removable disk (F) In other words the entry made when inserting the USB remained after it was removed

So far have not found a way of removing this indication of a non-existent drive. Any thoughts on how to overcome this?
Thanks in advance
C

SORRY
should have mentioned that this problem is on a HP Pavilion Laptop (dv9000 series) - running w10 64 bit o/s

Help - bad USB flashdrive caused a problem-image.png

swarfega · 06 Nov 2017

Have you looked at device manager to see if its listed there?

Skofab · 06 Nov 2017

Checked - not listed in device manager.
Please note that I have added a screenshot to my original post.
Thanks for your interest.
C

jumanji · 06 Nov 2017

Do a drive cleanup.

Download v 0.8.1 of the drivecleanup.zip from Drive Tools for Windows. ( You may use the latest version. It is just that I started using it when it was the latest version and continue to use it)

Unzip it to a folder, say drivecleanup.

You will have two folders Win32 and x64 each containing DriveCleanup.exe for 32 bit and 64 bit respectively.

Remove all USB storage devices from all the USB ports (except your Keyboard and mouse) and reboot.

Right click on the DriveCleanup.exe and run as administrator. (Use the DriveCleanup.exe file appropriate for your bit version of Windows.).

After the clean up act, reboot and check whether your system is still showing the non-existent drive.

( When you plug in your USB devices after this cleanup, these will be installed afresh. What you have done is to remove all non-present devices, drive letters and registry entries associated with them and start with a clean slate. Hopefully that should resolve the problem.)

EdTittel · 06 Nov 2017

Great suggestion, Jumanji. Uwe Sieber's Device Cleanup tool is equally helpful for flushing stale entries from Device Manager. Thanks for sharing,
--Ed--

Bree · 06 Nov 2017

Skofab said:

Checked - not listed in device manager.

Check again, this time click on View > Show hidden devices. Then you'll see all the USBs that have ever been connected. The default view only shows those that are currently connected.

cereberus · 06 Nov 2017

Do a full shutdown using alt+F4. Then reboot - this usually kills it.

Skofab · 06 Nov 2017

Thanks guys for the suggestions........... no success so far however

Switching to view did identify two USB's that were not in use (including the one that was the 'suspect'.)
I highlighted them and deleted. The offending 'hard drive (F) is still there - yes I did reboot.

Tried the Alt +F4 also, but again no result.
Thank you so much for your tips - keep them coming.:)

jumanji · 06 Nov 2017

EdTittel said:

Great suggestion, Jumanji. Uwe Sieber's Device Cleanup tool is equally helpful for flushing stale entries from Device Manager. Thanks for sharing,
--Ed--

Yep, Ed Tittel , you already told that on 15 Jul 17 and sure I remembered you when I wrote this post. :)

"Thanks for the tip about Sieber's great toolsuite. I used it as the focus for my post to the Windows Enterprise Desktop blog this morning: DriveCleanup Clears Stale Win10 Storage Metadata - Windows Enterprise Desktop. Much-appreciated!
--Ed--"

@ Skofab, Did you miss my post #4 ??

Skofab · 07 Nov 2017

Yes I did miss this = will give this a whirl later today, hope its not too complicated!
Thanks for your interest.