Windows 10: Device File written to Disk

I've been using the command line as a simple means of writing short strings of text to a serial port, with the command echo string of text > COM4. COM4 is a device file, and attempting to write will it will redirect its output to the serial port COM4. More on device files.

As far as I know, a file COM4 should never, ever be created or written to the disk. It should get stopped and sent to the COM port by the operating system. (Try it! Go to your file manager, create a new file and try naming it COM4 with no extension. It should kick back an error message.)

However, I started getting strange results, so I opened up the directory to check my code. (Strange results were unrelated to the presence of this file, I found an error in my code and it's working properly again.) I noticed that a COM4 file had appeared (see screenshot). I cannot read from, write to, delete, or rename this file.

The device file on the disk.

Windows 10 Home 1909 build 18363.1440, Ryzen 7 2700x, GTX 650, 32 GB (4x8) RAM, 1TB NVMe drive.

What should I do? Is there a way to remove this file?

submitted by /u/micromashor
[link] [comments]

:)

 

There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive \Device\Harddiskvolume8

Hi Brad,

There are a lot of possible factors for this matter to
occur. To
isolate the issue, we have some questions for you:

• 
  Were there any changes made before the issue occurred?
  
• 
  Is this happening when loading a certain application or all of the application?
  
• 
  What troubleshooting steps have you done so far?
  

Kindly run the
Hardware and Devices
troubleshooter to automatically repair any issue it finds. To run the troubleshooter, follow these steps:

• 
  On the search bar, type
  Troubleshooting
  and hit
  Enter.
  
• 
  Choose
  Hardware and Sound.
  
• 
  Click on
  Hardware and Devices
  to run the troubleshooter.
  

After running the troubleshooter, perform a
check disk
and check if there are any changes. To perform check disk, follow these steps:

• 
  Open
  Command Prompt
  as
  Administrator.
  
• 
  Type
  chkdsk /r /f
  and hit
  Enter.
  

If possible kindly post a screenshot of the return message provided by the troubleshooter and the check disk command
if the issue still persists so that we can investigate this matter further.

We'll be waiting for your response.

Regards.

 

DISK CLEANUP

Hello,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

1. Which files are you trying to delete using disk clean up?
2. Which version of Windows are you currently using?

Please reply back with the information to the above questions in order to provide you with appropriate troubleshooting steps:



I understand that you are trying to free up memory using Disk Cleanup. If you are trying to delete files using disk cleanup on Windows 10, I suggest you to refer the following article on

Disk cleanup in Windows 10 for steps to perform disk clean up on your PC.



Hope it helps.



Sandeep Kumar M

Microsoft Community – Moderator

 

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