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Amazing. Windows 10 updated automatically (don’t you just love Microsoft!!). The Zombie Drives are back again. I tried to repeat the earlier process but it does not work. I learned all sorts of stuff about GUID classes and USBSTOR… but nothing works. In the back of my mind I am praying for a complete computer failure so I can go back to Mac which I left 15 years ago. Wonder if I will recognize anything.

Yes. Apparently some of my more misguided efforts added drive letters.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I threw caution to the wind and modified the registry (not something I like to do).
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > Mounted Devices
This shows a lot of stuff I don’t understand but at the end were all the zombie drive letters. 44305-Regedit_DeleteDriveLetters
I deleted the ones I didn’t want (G: through M:)
Everything seems OK. Restarted; new flash drives are assigned the correct letters.

Your USBDevice program (nice) doesn’t show any unwanted drive letters except it shows F: for both a USD Mass storage device and the USB removable for my printer. Not going to worry about that.s

Thanks again for your patience.

You have the patience of a saint. Wish I could do more than say thank you.

1) The old printer was HP Photosmart D5360 (may she rest in peace). I never used the memory slots. The unique feature was that it printed on CDs. Apparently Epson has a patent on that and I can’t buy an HP printer that does that.
2) Found what looks like a solution. So far the Zombie drives are gone forever:

Disk Management: (I type “partition” into Cortana but there are other ways)
Right Click on unwanted removable drive.
Choose “Properties” from the pop-up window. This opens a new window with tabs.
Click on “Driver” tab and click on “Disable”. Answer “Yes” to warning.

So far, the Zombies are go after restart.

My only dilemma is what to do about the removable drive L: which shows up as

USB Drive (L:) I am afraid that removing this will prevent me from using flash drives.
Will worry about that later

Thanks for all your time. It was an interesting trip and I learned a lot. In college, I had to pay tuition. Long live the web.

Very interesting but unsuccessful. (At least I discovered how to screen copy from the cmd screen.)

I followed your instructions. I think I did it correctly. Here are the steps.
44289-26April2016_AttemptedKill
The F: drive is still intact with its original name (surprise?)

Actually I did it twice with the same result.

STRANGE: A new drive DIAGS (G:) appeared.
44290-26April2016_ZombieDrives
Unlike the other Zombies which think they are removable, this one will open but report that is empty (the others say “Please insert a disk into …”)

Upon restart, there is no DIAGS (G:)

(I feel guilty taking so much of your time. I think the exercise is fascinating.)

Yes I assigned Disk 5 the letter F: (which was the default).
When I started the process, I got this message (and clicked Yes)
44286-AssignDisk5_letterF

I feel guilty taking your time. Hope this is interesting to you. I can live with the current, sorta screwed up, situation.

http://meiere.com/FORRESTDESKTOP.arn1) Sorry I missed the suggestion about posting .arn file.
2) I feel OK modifying the registry – did that successfully twice.
Apparently can’t post the .arn file with you Insert Image procedure. Will try another way.

Does not seem to work. Maybe this?
http://meiere.com/FORRESTDESKTOP.arn

Looks perfect. Thanks. This is just to make sure I understand.
44284-DiskManagement2

1) Yes “old” printer installed before upgrade to Win 10
2) As I recall, I had to reinstall “old” printer after upgrade to Win 10
3) Yes; I uninstalled “old” printer software from Control Panel before installing new printer.
4) No Photosmart software shows in Control Panel>Programs and Features

Autoruns.exe – neat program Seems to show interesting items in the registry. I suspected from the beginning that these zombies were in the registry somewhere. Apparently not but this seems to clear up that conjecture. There are a bunch of entries for HP but nothing even close to the old printer (HP Photosmart). Most I recognize such at the new printer (HP Officejet 5740), HP updates, HP Smart Print and some general HP support.

I looked manually and then use the filter for HP so I don’t think I missed anything.

Did you post your screen shot with ? There has to be a better way than uploading to a website and then downloading here.

Will try. Is there an easy way to post an image? This seems barbaric.

Someone suggested another solution using a Windows tool.
Open Disk Management
Select the Zombie Drive
Choose Change Drive Letter and Path
Click Remove

Interestingly, both solution leave the Zombie drives as Disks (e.g. Disk 2, Disk 3, Disk 4, Disk 5) and start the remaining useful Disks as Disk 6, …. Strange but not a real problem in practice.

Yeah! Cool! At least it worked on the one I tried. Probably will kill those others as well.
This looks like DOS. God – I hated DOS. Thirty years ago I was a Mac guy, as were all but one of my co-workers. Glad DOS survived after all.

Thanks:o

Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately, this just repeats what I mentioned in my original post as an action which does not work. Your first 2 steps just open Device Manager which can be opened directly. I uninstalled the 4 “drives” and they reappear after a restart.

As mentioned the original post, my guess is that there are registry entries somewhere that resurrects the zombies. No hard evidence.

1. Did both (ran from my account which has adm privilege and ran as adm)
2. Uninstalled from control panel
3. No HP printer software runs at startup
(only hp software is hp scheduler)
Zombie drives won’t go away.
Thanks for your interest. Weird situation. HP, as usual, is no help.