So my machine is running Win7 perfectly but a friend who runs Win10 asked me if I could download the Win10 boot prog on a flash drive for him. I didn't see any harm in doing this but I made sure I specified I wanted the prog to install on another machine and it was to be downloaded direct to the flash drive (E). Everything went fine and at the end of the day I closed down my machine. The next day I boot up and immediately notice something has changed - it's taking longer to boot and it isn't the normal screen - it's the boot up screen for Win10! Now it wants me to start setting up the new installation and the only way I can get out of it is to pull the power. So now I double check there are no flash drives or anything connected and then reboot - same result! Now I reboot again but this time I go into the bios and bloody Microscrewup has placed a virtual flash drive in the system which is a clone of the one I created for my mate, and the system has been reset to boot from it! So I try to reset the boot configuration but you can reorder the other drives but not E it remains fixed in place. I also notice that the Boot Over ride option has been activated and E is at the top of the list there too. I deactivate the Boot Over ride and now I can move the virtual E drive down the boot order. Back in Win 7 I use Disc Director to format the virtual E drive so it can't be booted from again, and now I don't have a problem with the booting side but it has screwed up the use of external drives completely. Whenever I plug in a flash drive it is now always seen as a copy of the original E. No matter what size it is always reported as 4 gb (same as the original) and the drives files are not seen. I have run sfc/scannow and it reports no problems. I do have restore points but each time I try to use one it comes back reporting failure. Do any of you geniuses out there have an idea of how I can get my machine back?
+1 to their Billion device count. They are gonna cheat, punch and kick their way to 1 Billion devices lol
A restore point, a repair install or restore a System Image. At least one should work for you. I prefer restoring a System Image. Or do a complete fresh Installation. We geniuses do that all the time.
Yes, they are so cheap that they will adopt any means to bump the no. of upgrades till 29 July. Funnily enough they won't take into account the no. of rollbacks people did. They just want the no. of activations of Win10. Also I think the offer would be extended after 29 July. I'd be surprised if it doesn't. They would most probably be like, "Oh! We are so glad that so many are using Win10 and it has been a huge success, more than Win7 was ever at that time. We are so happy that we are extending the Free Upgrade Offer for another year (or whatever). Upgrade today..."
Managed to get system restore to work while in Safe mode and went back to a point 2 weeks prior to the download - guess what? Bloody virtual E drive is still there and the machine still reports every external drive as a clone of the original 4 gb flash I downloaded to! Well done Microscrewit! At this point I am seriously thinking of saying goodbye to windoze and going over to Linux!
So find that disk image on your hard drive and delete it. ( And I'm not even a rocket scientist. ) Edit to add: Yeah, it's so sad that Micro$oft twisted your arm so hard as to force you to download that image in the first place.
Firstly I was downloading a file for a mate and as I said I specified at the site it was for use on ANOTHER machine and the file was to be stored on the external flash drive - if I had known Microscrewit was going to create a virtual drive I would never have downloaded the file in the first place. And how do you delete a virtual drive? I have no idea what it's called or where it's stored - if you know how to do it please let me know (same goes to anybody else reading this).
Why? Because Microscrewit says so and has done everything it can to force its unwanted product on me. I like 7 and I have no intention of ever using 10. If it comes to it I'll switch to Linux first.
Search for a file ending in ".iso". Or you could turn autoplay off so it doesn't try to automagically run your disc image, and unmount the image.
Both of my alcohol 120% virtual discs do not show up in disk management... Mounted or not. - Just an FYI
Hidden files and folders, yea, it wouldn't show up, well, one of them anyway, looking at my screens one of them isn't hidden
And if I click mount on a ISO it immediately shows as a CD-ROM in disc management, but I'm using Win 8.1
8.x and 10 both have that ability, no need for virtual drive software for mounting ISOs any more unless you still use 7 or earlier
Yeah, I still use 64 bit 7. I do remember playing with Micro$ofts virtual drive, but I prefer Alcohol 120%. With axcmd.exe I am able to mount, play, and dismount DVD images with a simple double click of a custom "__Play_Me_.cmd" file... Now if I could just get 7 to display custom background images in explorer like I did with XP via desktop.ini, life would be good....