USB hard drive stopped working after DTL installation

[alex1a]

Hi,

my 500GB USB hard disk worked well all the time, until I installed the latest version of Deamon Tools Lite on my Windows 2003 x86 server.

Please help me and tell me what I should try to get it back like it was before (I don't need a virtual CD drive).

I try to give as much info as possible, please ask for more:

The automatically created new virtual CD drive got its drive letter E:, and showed instead of the USB disk. So I changed the drive letter for the virtual CD drive to V:, but it didn't help: my drive E: didn't reappear, even not after a second reboot (first was for SPTD installation).

So I tried to unplug/plug the USB disk in combination with reboots and many tries to assign a drive letter in windows disk management. There I always got an internal error and the hint to look into the system log, but there was nothing interesting.

So I uninstalled DTL including reboot, no change.
So I uninstalled SPTD including reboot and check that all files are really gone, no change.
I also installed the latest version of SPTD manually and uninstalled it again, no change.

I tried the USB disk in a different computer, there it worked like always.

I tried a different USB stick in this computer, and it worked. So it's not a general failure of USB disks - just for this drive.

I got access to the disk by mounting it with Paragon Partition manger. Interestingly, there the mounting worked and the drive showed as E: in the file explorer. File operations of any type work, but windows partition manager doesn't show the driver letter assignment and still shows internal errors on any operation including viewing the properties. It even assigns this same drive letter E: to my other USB drive when I plug it in.

The drive letter E:, mounted by Paragon, stays when I unplug the USB disk (unlike how it was before).
After a reboot the disk is gone again, windows can't mount it, and I can use Paragon again if I need access.

The windows partition manager (gui and diskpart tool, too) don't show the volume in the volume list. So, in diskpart I cannot select it, and therefore not try to mount it.
In the GUI tool, it is also not shown in the (normally hidden) volume list, but it is shown in the graphical display, without a drive letter. But I cannot use any options there, I always get "the operation didn't complete" or "internal error" (translated from german!).

After lots of tries and lot of reboots, I have no idea.
Any hints?

[Sway]

Do you have drivers for your USB hard disk? Try to reinstall them.

[alex1a]

Do you have drivers for your USB hard disk? Try to reinstall them.

I don't have specific drivers for it, but I already uninstalled the driver from the device manager, then plugged the device out and in and windows reinstalled them -> no change.

[DevX]

You can try to clear HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
and reboot.
This will clear all current letter assignments.
Then you can try reassign letters for all drives.

[alex1a]

You can try to clear HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
and reboot.
This will clear all current letter assignments.
Then you can try reassign letters for all drives.

It looks like this:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices]
"\\??\\Volume{532f9ec0-5432-11dc-8dd4-806e6f6e6963}"=hex:...
"\\??\\Volume{532f9ec3-5432-11dc-8dd4-806e6f6e6963}"=hex:...
"\\DosDevices\\C:"=hex:...
"\\DosDevices\\D:"=hex:...
"\\??\\Volume{ebd33f88-a10f-11dc-b64a-806e6f6e6963}"=hex:...
"\\DosDevices\\W:"=hex:...
"\\??\\Volume{f153dc01-72d3-11df-bc16-001921211740}"=hex:...
"\\DosDevices\\E:"=hex:...

fyi: E: is not shown in the Explorer, it used to be that USB drive.
I wonder what all those ?? devices are. I just have C: (2 raid harddisks), D: (harddisk), and W: (dvd)

Maybe it's a good idea, just to delete that E: key?

Or is it 100% secure and can not do any harm to delete all of them?

[alex1a]

I found that the 4 "DosDevice" entries had the same binary values than the 4 "??" entries and deleted the E: entry and the corresponding ?? entry as well.

After a reboot no change

Still internal error in the windows disk management; mounted with paragon, the drive if accessible but I still cannot run chkdsk on it, or create a network share with it. Error: drive does not exist. Since this was my network storage, this is worse than having to remount it after every reboot.

Any other ideas? (Or do you still want me to delete all keys?)

[DevX]

You can try delete all these keys. If needed you can reassign letters for your drives later.
Also DAEMON Tools is not cause of your problem - we never change letters from other drives or delete them.
Most likely it is related to other filter driver in your system which changed something in system when new drives appeared and now these changes are persistent even after DT removal.

[evlncrn8]

actually, what happens if you start windows in safemode (pressing esc to stop sptd from loading).. does the drive re-appear then?

[alex1a]

actually, what happens if you start windows in safemode (pressing esc to stop sptd from loading).. does the drive re-appear then?

sptd is not installed anymore. i also checked that its files are deleted. so i don't need to try this, right? (for safemode i had to attach a screen and keyboard...)

[alex1a]

The problem still exists. I have no idea and the strong feeling I have to reinstall windows. I don't want to believe that!

[DevX]

The fact alone that DT and SPTD are not installed anymore but your drive is still not working proves that DT is not cause of your trouble.
Afterall, our program never modifies other drives and their drive letters.
So it is not understandable why you post in our forum and seek support here.
You should better check other utilities you may have run on your PC.

[alex1a]

I ask here because I am pretty sure DT caused it somehow. The drive worked exactly until DT took its drive letter over! There was no other tool involved.

[alex1a]

No idea where I could look, what I could try, whom I could ask?

[sdwillie]

You mentinoed that things failed after installing the <i>newest</i> DTL. If you mean you've been using previous versions, most likely your USB drive (or port) failed at the time you were doing the install.

Try plugging the drive into a different USB port, and if you have a USB keyboard you should simply try switching those ports. You should also try plugging the drive into a different computer.

Everything is going to fail on you at some point, and I guarantee that when those things fail, you're going to be doing <i>something</i>. Whatever it is that you're doing has nothing to do with the failure.

[alex1a]

The problem is gone since a week.

For several months I tried many things (including a different USB port), asked many people and had to live with the problem.

Now I needed a virtual cd and decided to try daemon tools lite again. I installed it and this time the virtual cd drive worked without a problem. So I tried my USB hard drive again, too, and it worked!

If you ask me, that means DTL caused the problem and this later version fixed it. The only other explanation I could imagine is some windows update hotfix. But I dont really believe that.