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Receiving a new batch of PCs prompted us to recapture our WDS image for our on-site Windows 7 machines. Rolled into the new image (i.e. the only changes that have been made since the previous version of the image) was the suite of drivers, Adobe Reader upgraded from 9.13 to 10.0 and the exclusion of Microsoft Access.

When we deploy this image to a PC we now get two hard drives appearing in Explorer.

Windows 7 Explorer

This second disk, when viewing the properties, is an exact clone of the "real" hard drive (these machines only have one installed). This phantom drive is full of what looks like temp/log/cache files.

Windows 7 Explorer - Z Drive

Edit: Disk Management shows only one disk assigned one drive letter.

Windows 7 Explorer - Disk Management

We have tried uninstalling Adobe after deployment, but the problem persists. Is there any way to remove this drive (so our users don't try storing documents in there thinking they have a second drive installed)?

Gareth
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Windos
  • 11,235

2 Answers2

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Open a command-prompt (cmd.exe) and run subst; you should see something like the following:

C:\>subst
Z:\: => C:\Users\JOSHUAK\AppData\Local\Temp

C:\>

It means that the drive letter ‘Z’ is mapped to your temp directory (it might be the system temp directory C:\Windows\Temp instead of your user temp directory C:\Users\JOSHUAK\AppData\Local\Temp).

You can delete the mapping as follows.

C:\subst z: /d

Your next task is to figure out where the mapping is being done. Try a tool like Autoruns.

Synetech
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I just want to clarify, since use of subst is not recommended and many folks will not understand the difference between a mapped drive and a subst.

Subst does not map a drive. That is done with net.exe and refers to assigning a drive letter to a network drive. Subst basically creates an "alias" (that's not the technically correct term) for a path on an existing drive. You can subst to a mapped drive. For instance, you can map (using net.exe) a network drive as drive K:\, create K:\MyStuff and then subst M: K:\MyStuff.

As mentioned, although subst still exists and works fine, use of that is generally discouraged.

Rick75230
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