Windows 10: Help - bad USB flashdrive caused a problem

Morning everyone.
have just noticed that having taken a USB flashdrive ( which I found could not be written to or read ) - I consigned this to the rubbish bin.

A little later I found that an additional 'hard drive' entry was indicated in the 'This PC' window, which now shows a removable disk (F) In other words the entry made when inserting the USB remained after it was removed

So far have not found a way of removing this indication of a non-existent drive. Any thoughts on how to overcome this?
Thanks in advance
C

SORRY
should have mentioned that this problem is on a HP Pavilion Laptop (dv9000 series) - running w10 64 bit o/s





:)

 

Windows 10 Upgrade Error "Something Happened 0x8009000F-0x90002 "

Problem Solved

My Windows 7 HP has a TV tuner in it using Media Center which is incompatible with Windows 10 causing the

"something happened" blue screen.

Solution:

Using another Computer and a 8GB flash USB drive, I installed the Upgrade to the Flashdrive.

Ran the Setup from the USB Flashdrive in my computer. The Upgrade program discovered the Media Center application, asked to uninstall it and installed Windows 10 Successfully.

 

Windows 10 - downloading my flash drive to computer, how

I have pictures on my flashdrive that I would like to download to my laptop, I have windows 10. I put the flashdrive into the USB port, I see the USB on File Explorer, but the pictures will not download, why?

Thank you.

 

Have you looked at device manager to see if its listed there?

 

Checked - not listed in device manager.
Please note that I have added a screenshot to my original post.
Thanks for your interest.
C

 

Do a drive cleanup.

Download v 0.8.1 of the drivecleanup.zip from Drive Tools for Windows. ( You may use the latest version. It is just that I started using it when it was the latest version and continue to use it)

Unzip it to a folder, say drivecleanup.

You will have two folders Win32 and x64 each containing DriveCleanup.exe for 32 bit and 64 bit respectively.

Remove all USB storage devices from all the USB ports (except your Keyboard and mouse) and reboot.

Right click on the DriveCleanup.exe and run as administrator. (Use the DriveCleanup.exe file appropriate for your bit version of Windows.).

After the clean up act, reboot and check whether your system is still showing the non-existent drive.

( When you plug in your USB devices after this cleanup, these will be installed afresh. What you have done is to remove all non-present devices, drive letters and registry entries associated with them and start with a clean slate. Hopefully that should resolve the problem.)

 

Great suggestion, Jumanji. Uwe Sieber's Device Cleanup tool is equally helpful for flushing stale entries from Device Manager. Thanks for sharing,
--Ed--

 

Check again, this time click on View > Show hidden devices. Then you'll see all the USBs that have ever been connected. The default view only shows those that are currently connected.

 

Do a full shutdown using alt+F4. Then reboot - this usually kills it.

 

Thanks guys for the suggestions........... no success so far however*Sad

Switching to view did identify two USB's that were not in use (including the one that was the 'suspect'.)
I highlighted them and deleted. The offending 'hard drive (F) is still there - yes I did reboot.

Tried the Alt +F4 also, but again no result.
Thank you so much for your tips - keep them coming.*Smile

 

Yep, Ed Tittel , you already told that on 15 Jul 17 and sure I remembered you when I wrote this post. *Smile

"Thanks for the tip about Sieber's great toolsuite. I used it as the focus for my post to the Windows Enterprise Desktop blog this morning: DriveCleanup Clears Stale Win10 Storage Metadata - Windows Enterprise Desktop. Much-appreciated!
--Ed--"

@ Skofab, Did you miss my post #4 ??

 

Yes I did miss this = will give this a whirl later today, hope its not too complicated!
Thanks for your interest.

 

Press the Win Key+X choose Disk Management In the Bottom pane, is the F: drive listed? Right click the Disk# and choose Eject.
Also, do you have a Card Reader on your computer or Printer? If so, that is the F: drive.

 

Not complicated at all but very simple. Just download v1.5.0 extract, if your system is 32bit, right click on the DriveCleanup.exe in the Win32 folder and run it as administrator.

My instructions in post#4 are very clear.

 

Try disk management, r/c & select delete volume (if it's showing)