Phantom drives? What's this all about?

[OuTpaTienT]

I just noticed this happening the past week or so. But I seem to remember having something like this occur occasionally ever since Win95. Does this happen to others? What/why is it?

Example:
The two drives pointed out, W: & W:, don't exist. And they are not there when I start a Windoze session, but somewhere along the way they magically appear. If I click on them I get "device not ready".

http://members.home.net/0utpatient/mysterydrives.gif

[Richard_Cranium72]

Sorta similar, though not exactly. I have a phantom "A" drive on one of mine. It has a LS-120 instead of a floppy, but this is listed as "D" and my cd-rom as "E". If I click on the A drive, my pewter locks up, tightly.... DrVette

[Petros]

Richard: I had that problem on one of my computers. Fixed it by disabling the floppy drive option in BIOS. Don't know if it will work for you, but it might be worth a try.

Pete

Sorry Out, don't know how to fix that one http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[Dave_H]

Those are the "printer" and "Controll Panel" icons that have been replaced arn't they?
I have herd about it happening and was believed to be caused by IE 5.5 beta by some.
Others said they had IE 5.01 and could "make" it to happen by deleating a file too big for the recycle bin.
Sorry for not knowing the solution.
Dave

[Stan]

Hi,

I think this is related to Active Desktop.

I notice the same "problem" on several PCs.
Control Panel and Printer are "renamed" to W: drives. But, as soon as you refresh the explorer, they come back.

This has never happened on PC with IE (4.01, 5.0, 5.1 or 5.5) without Active Desktop.

It happens regularly on my PC where IE 5.01 has Active Desktop installed...

Funny he ?

Stan

[OuTpaTienT]

hmmm, that's interesting because I have never had Active Destop enabled.

but sure enough, you recreated it right there. I dunno.

[sns]

I also have never had the active desktop enabled and get the 2 'w' drives regualarly.
I've never been too concerned because the refresh as said above gets rid of them. I only noticed it when I installed my CDrw and adaptec software and installed my 2nd h/drive (both around the same time). Another Question, why that particular icon? It looks like the wordpad icon doesnt it?
My system seems to be working fine otherwise so I've been taking the EZ option and leaving the cover on. If they didnt go away I would start removing my spare drives, software etc.
Its funny how you get used to seeing (and accept) an anomaly with computers/software and its not until someone else brings it up that you realise its a bit more common.

[Stan]

Easy problem to re-create...

http://freespace.virgin.net/stany.thibaut/pic.jpg

Stan

[Stan]

There is a diferrence between enabled and installed.

You can install Active Desktop but you can still choose NOT to view your desktop as an Active Desktop...

Stan


[This message has been edited by Stan (edited 07-21-2000).]

[Magnum]

It is caused by a bug in IE5 and IE5.1. The bug was corrected in IE5.5. If you refresh your desktop and open explorer again you will notice that your icons will be correct.

[sns]

I'll keep a look out for it now magnum. I've downloaded ie5.5, here goes.

[qball]

This is neither an IE or Active Desktop bug. I've seen this occur on 95/98/NT for years. It still occurs on my 98 box (IE5.5, AD disabled). F5 (refresh) clears it up.

My guess is low level drive mapping bug. Occurs to me after playing some games.

[Steve R Jones]

The Drive W is a known bug. Hitting F5 should make them go away. (till next time)

[Jonty]

And I thought I was the only one getting this 'feature'! I get this quite often but refreshing generally clears it up, I'm running IE5.5 and active desktop not running. What has it to do with IE anyway, surely it's an explorer thing?

I haven't been able to view the pictures by Outpatient or Stan by the way.

Another 'feature' I get often in Explorer is when a CD is in the drive. When it's ejected I press refresh but the old info about the CD is still there. If I put another CD in still the old info is there, no amount of refreshing will change it. I can close Explorer then open it and still the old info is there. Sometimes it does refresh itself but not often. Is this related to this other problem?

[Cody]

Just so you know (you seem not to), part of the lawsuit against Microsoft was that [internet explorer] was so tightly integrated into it's operating systems. That's why you can open explorer, type a URL in the Address box, maximize it, and it is IE.... they are basically the same program (I believe the same executable, but I may be wrong)