Hi I'm a newcomer to the boards, but hope to stick around.
I have the same issues (in regards to duplicate drives, not the sound issue) described by mickey7 in this thread:
In my particular case, I have two hard drives (one SATA, four partitions across the two) and one DVD-RW drive. The DVD-RW drive suddenly split itself into two drives, G: and H:, and refers to itself as a non-recording generic CD drive now. If you put a CD or DVD into the drive, it reads it just fine, though it shows up in both drives on the My Computer list. Clicking on either one does allow you to browse the media. The drive also now does not burn DVDs or CDs, and all programs I've tried since say that no recorder is detected.
This is very strange, as it is strange problem to begin with, and a couple days' worth of searching the 'net indicates that a few people have had the same issue to the letter - and all posted questions have been in the last couple days or last week.
I have an IT background and am computer literate; I have checked and re-checked all the usual culprits and solutions. I will continue to watch mickey's thread to see what the resolution is in case it will help me, but wanted to post something about this odd coincidence. As far as I can tell, it is not active malware, as I've checked the system and registry, scanned and re-scanned many, many times in the last few days.
We are working on it, also in one of our private tech forums. So basically, it requires one to stick with it, for the benefit of the greater good one could say. Altho, I can imagine it is tempting to just wipe the HD and start over. We have some clever heads among us, so hopefully a solution will (soon) be found.
Hi Vendetta.. Would you be so kind as to post a PCPitStop scan so we can compare system characteristics with Mickey?
Here's how: How to run PCPitStop's Overdrive tests:
Please click here to go to the PCPitStop Overdrive sign-up page: Signup at PCPitStop (You need to use Internet Explorer with this test so that an ActiveX control can be installed.)
Click "Create a free account"
Enter in your relevant information on the sign-up page. You must sign-up in order to have your results recorded so that we can take a look at them here.
After signing up you'll see the "Registration Complete" page, and you can click "Test Your System Now" to return to the test page.
Login with your newly created e-mail address and password on the left hand side.
Follow the directions to "Scan this system now." An activeX control will need to be installed. It is safe, and you should allow it to be installed.
Once the tests have been run, you will see an "Almost there" page requesting further information about your computer and your experience with PCPitStop, just scroll down to the bottom and click "GO."
A test results page will display, and I need the link to that page.
Look in the address bar of your browser. It will look like 'http://www.pcpitstop.com/betapit/…' Please copy and paste that here to the forum.
Note: PCPitStop may recommend that you use certain utilities to fix problems on your computer. At WhatTheTech, the help we provide is free. We do not endorse or recommend the use of any products PCPitStop may suggest. Instead, we prefer to help you with each issue manually without using possible pay to use programs.
Thanks a lot! I'll be hot on the trail of this problem.
Vendetta, can you open Disk Management and see if duplicate CD/DVD drives show up?
Right-click My Computer, click Manage, and click Disk Management. In the bottom portion of the window, scroll down and locate the CD/DVD drives. See if there is a device listed for each drive letter you see in My Computer.
2) I can not believe that I left out the entire other half of my problem in my original post - Disk Management is empty. I'm not sure when that happened; most likely when this all happened in the first place. I do know that it used to work. I have checked the common problems - I have the required services running (Logical Disk Mgmt, Logical Disk Mgmt Admin, and one more that I can't recall at the moment). I've tried various combinations of common fixes to get Disk Management to populate without success. I am the only user on this machine with full Admin rights. I'm not getting an error when selecting the Disk Management screen; it says "Connecting to Logical Disk Management service" at the bottom, then this disappears, and it simply displays nothing.
Device Manager, on the other hand, works perfectly. Yesterday I modified the registry to view *all* devices, in addition to the View>Hidden Devices that you can select. In my Device Manager, I do not have duplicate disk drives, or duplicate CD/DVD drives, or anything other than the two physical hard drives and the one physical DVD drive present in those two sections. Oddly enough, the DVD ATAPI shows up as its true self, not as a CD-ROM, in the device manager. Then again, since it still at least reads DVD-ROMs, I guess that makes sense. There are no driver conflicts or "warnings" anywhere in the list, save for an audio driver that I manually placed and never got around to fixing. I've also tried removing the "Generic Volume" entries (grayed out and otherwise) in the Storage Volumes section and this did not resolve the issue. I've uninstalled the DVD drive from DM several times to let XP rediscover it, and this also didn't appear to change things.
3) I haven't tried the guest User Account thing yet; wanted to go ahead and post this info up first since it's getting late. I'll have to turn on a that group of User Switching services and whatnot first But will let you guys know if that works.
4) The MountedDevices list sure doesn't look right to me, haha. I've attached the report. I tried the command line given to Mickey last night and got the same message (the number of mounted devices exceeds… ) which wasn't too helpful. I had the suspicion that mounted devices, or virtual drives, were causing the problem… I didn't really use them, though previously have had DaemonTools Lite and Alcohol 120 installed. I had thought I had thoroughly removed them but maybe a virtual drive or two got stuck.. you'll be better than I am at interpreting the Mounted report.
I await your thoughts… thanks again for taking a look
Hi Vendetta.. Can you confirm that your CD/DVD drive is a SATA drive?
Also, am I correct that you have only one CD/DVD drive and that the two duplicated drive letters are G: and H:?
Actually, my DVD drive is IDE. My setup in regards to drive paths is a little strange, but it is - or, was - like this:
Hard drive #1 - an old Maxtor, IDE, Two partitions, Drive paths C:\ and E:\
Hard drive #2 - a new Western Digital, SATA, Two partitions, Drive paths D:\ and F:\
DVD drive - Lite-On DH-20A4P-04 SuperAllwrite, IDE, Drive path was probably G:\, though I won't swear to that.. it would have been logically next in line, having no other 'always connected' devices present.
I realize the paths are a bit hopscotched, but I pulled hair out for days trying to get both hard drives to work together back in February '09, and that's how it ended up.
And yep, the duplicated drives are currently G: and H:.
Ok.. I'm digging deeper into your registry to find out what is going on here.. I need another REG QUERY and probably at least a couple more after that.
Please click start -> run -> type cmd and press ENTER.
Copy and paste this command: reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SCSI" > "%userprofile%\desktop\EnumSCSI.txt" /s and press ENTER.
Attach the EnumSCSI.txt file that is on your desktop to the forum please.
I have an "invalid key name" error coming up when attempting to do that one. I manually opened regedit and browsed to that location, and the SCSI key does exist, but has no binary values attached to it. Selecting it only displays (Default)" .. "REG_SZ" .. "(value not set)".
Lets make sure there isn't a permissions problem.
Please right-click the ENUM\SCSI key and click Permissions. Click the "Advanced" button, and then click the "Owner" tab. Select "Administrators" from the list, and click "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects." Click APPLY. Now click the "Permissions" tab and make sure EVERYONE is listed as having READ permission. If not add it. Check "Replace permission entries on all child objects…" and click OK, and OK, to get back to the main registry editor window. Now see if you can expand that key and see any more data?
Permissions looked OK. Both "Administrator" (what my profile is called) and "Administrators" (the standard group) were marked as owner, and the "Everyone" group had read permissions on the Enum/SCSI key. I went ahead and applied changes after checking the box on the owner tab anyway – but still the same info was shown.
Saw your edit a little late, sorry about that Here's the report.
I'm a newcomer to the boards, but hope to stick around.
And yep, the duplicated drives are currently G: and H:.