 Number 198 - November 1999 |
| Phantom Floppy Drive | ||
| by Carl Tenning, Tacoma Open Group | ||
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I had a spare Iomega
Ditto tape drive that I wanted to install in my downstairs computer, but
all of the slots were already filled. The two large slots contained a
CD-ROM drive and a 5.25-inch floppy drive. The two small slots contained
a 3.5-inch floppy drive and a 3.5-inch IDE Zip drive. So I decided to
remove the 5.25-inch floppy drive. I then installed the tape drive in
this slot and all of the devices worked OK. I noticed, however, that
Windows Explorer still showed a B: floppy drive and the Send To box
(when you right click on a file name) showed a 5.25-inch floppy drive.
Neither worked, but caused a rather long delay if they were selected.
So, I just avoided clicking on them.
Even the Device Manager showed two floppy disk devices. Trying to remove the second floppy device in Device Manager did not get rid of it. It just showed up again on the next boot-up. It wasn't until some time later that I discovered you could get rid of it in the Send To box by deleting it from the Send To subdirectory of Windows. That, however, did not get rid of it in Windows Explorer or the My Computer window. I finally discovered a utility called Tweak UI (free from Microsoft)1 that was able to eliminate the phantom floppy drive. Installing Tweak UI puts an icon in the Control Panel. |
Running Tweak UI from the Control Panel displays a
box with several different tabs. Selecting the "My Computer" tab brings
up a list of all the drive letters with check boxes beside them. You
simply uncheck the box for the drive you wish to eliminate from the My
Computer display. I did this and it also removed the phantom B: drive
from Windows Explorer.
Tweak UI is available for downloading from the ZD Net Software Library at http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/ texis/swlib/hotfiles/search.html.
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Number 198 - November 1999
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