Virtual Cd Rom

  • Thread starter Thread starter TDS
  • Start date Start date
T

TDS

I have a CD rom drive listed in the disk management console that is not
actually a device on my machine. It does not show as a drive in windows
explorer. The problem is that there is a large file ( an .mdf file) on my
hard drive that I cannot delete because it appears that it is attached to
this phantom CDrom as a virtual drive. I have deleted the drive in the
device manager, and deleted it from the disk management console by
uninstalling the driver, but the drive comes back when I restart the
computer. I do
not have magic ISO or Power ISO on my computer (someone told me that is the
app for a .mdf ext), but the person who had it
before me may have.

I would like to remove the device from the disk management console and
delete the file permanently. Any help would be appreciated.

Terry

PS - sorry if this is the wrong group - was not sure where to post.
 
TDS wrote:
> I have a CD rom drive listed in the disk management console that is not
> actually a device on my machine. It does not show as a drive in windows
> explorer. The problem is that there is a large file ( an .mdf file) on my
> hard drive that I cannot delete because it appears that it is attached to
> this phantom CDrom as a virtual drive. I have deleted the drive in the
> device manager, and deleted it from the disk management console by
> uninstalling the driver, but the drive comes back when I restart the
> computer. I do
> not have magic ISO or Power ISO on my computer (someone told me that is the
> app for a .mdf ext), but the person who had it
> before me may have.
>
> I would like to remove the device from the disk management console and
> delete the file permanently. Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Terry
>
> PS - sorry if this is the wrong group - was not sure where to post.
>

There was a site called www.sysinternals.com and the site was
acquired by Microsoft. The site still works and the developers
who wrote the utilities, still work on them.

It is possible a utility on sysinternals, can be used to determine
which process is holding on to the .mdf file. Now, when I downloaded
one of the utilities and tried it on my machine, as a test, it
locked my machine up and required me to press the reset button.

I suspect my antivirus software, and these kind of utilities, may
not get along very well. I disabled the file checking section of
my antivirus software, but the computer still locked up. At that
point, I gave up.

A more trivial way to do this, is to press control-alt-delete and
bring up the Task Manager. Have a look through the list of tasks,
and perhaps an obvious one there is the virtual CD software.

Have you looked in Add/Remove, to see if the software was put there
by an installer ? It could well be part of some larger package,
like a burner package. Removing it manually, isn't really a lot
of fun, especially if you mess something up.

Paul
 
IIRC, *.mdf files are for Alcohol -- the name of a CD burning program.
If all else fails, you might find the specific reference in the
registry. Back up your registry before you even *think* of editing
anything; export any registry keys you decide to change; and be aware
that one wrong move can kill your computer.


Lady Dungeness
Crabby, but Great Legs!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:36:42 -0400, "TDS" <Terry@Durbin.com> wrote:

|I have a CD rom drive listed in the disk management console that is not
|actually a device on my machine. It does not show as a drive in windows
|explorer. The problem is that there is a large file ( an .mdf file) on my
|hard drive that I cannot delete because it appears that it is attached to
|this phantom CDrom as a virtual drive. I have deleted the drive in the
|device manager, and deleted it from the disk management console by
|uninstalling the driver, but the drive comes back when I restart the
|computer. I do
|not have magic ISO or Power ISO on my computer (someone told me that is the
|app for a .mdf ext), but the person who had it
|before me may have.
|
|I would like to remove the device from the disk management console and
|delete the file permanently. Any help would be appreciated.
|
|Terry
|
|PS - sorry if this is the wrong group - was not sure where to post.
|
 
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