Windows 10: Phantom Disk on desktop PC running Windows 10

I am seeking help in removing a “Phantom Disk F” on my desktop PC.


Here are the details --


Recently, when using my Desktop PC, running Windows 10, this message keeps popping up – “Low disk space. You are running out of disk space on Local Disk (F): Click here to see if you can free space on this drive.” I don't have a Local Disk (F) attached to this PC.


When I click on “Click here” nothing happens.


Here’s a picture of the “Phantom Disk F” at the bottom of my Devices and drives for "This PC Shortcut"




I have searched online for a solution and, although there are many suggested solutions, none have solved this problem for me.

:)

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

• Open a new Explorer window.
• Click View in the ribbon.
• Click Options.
• Under General, next to “Open File Explorer to:” choose “This PC.”
• Click OK

credit to Lifehacker.

 

non existing phantom drives listed as Unknown devices in Device Manager

Original title: Phantom drive in Windows 10

OS Windows 10. My computer showed two phantom drives. I tried to eject them through the “Safely remove hardware and eject media” but I never get a list of those drives to remove.

I also tried through the Device Manager> View> Show Hidden Devices> but those phantom drives do not show in the listing, so I can’t uninstall them. It did show a “WPD FileSystem Volume Driver” with a yellow triangle and I clicked to uninstall. Then
I moved to Disk drives in the same Device manager and it listed one non-existing drive. I clicked on uninstall and after a little time it instructed me to restart the computer which I did by clicking the “restart now’. The computer went to restart and just
hanged in there, allowed it to work the restart for a couple of hours so I finally did a hard reboot.

When it finally came on, I clicked on the Windows Explorer> This PC. This time it showed only one phantom drive as “Local Disk H:”

Opened again Device Manage> View> Show hidden devices> under disks it only showed the correct disks installed on the PC. Under portable devices showed: Unknown device, so I did uninstall it. Closed the Device manager. No restart request this time.

On Windows explorer it still shows the phantom drive as “Local Disk H:”

Next I went to Disk Management. The window for it came up but although it says “Connecting to Virtual Disk Service,” it never shows anything in spite of letting it work for a couple of hours. I believe the PC gets confused searching for that non-existing
phantom drive. Also checked under Computer management> Services> Virtual Disk: and it said it was running. Still nothing shows in Disk Management.

The Phantom disk I believe is interfering with the search feature in Windows Explorer since every time I try to find a document it takes too long.

On my frustration downloaded from Microsoft the “Windows installation tool” for my Windows 10 and tried that to see if a repair would get me clear of that non-existing drive. However after doing that repair it still did list the non-existing drive.
So I tried again with that DVD and did a reinstall of Windows 10. No luck the phantom drive is still there; if I click on it the computer tries to find it and just hangs in there and nothing can be done on it just freezes.

Any help and suggestions will be greatly appreciated

 

phantom homegroup


Hey ruggb,
Give this a try ...
1. Make sure all PC's have left the HomeGroup or are NOT joined to a HomeGroup
2. Turn off ALL PC's
3. Start the PC that originally had HomeGroup and now has the Phantom HomeGroup
4. You should be able to create a new HomeGroup on that PC replacing the phantom HomeGroup. Print or write down new HomeGroup password.
5. Start the other PCs and attempt to join HomeGroup with new password.

Note: Make sure you use the ORIGINAL PC that had the Phatom HomeGroup ! (step 3)
Note: Once you have fixed the Phantom HomeGroup, you should be able to have all the PC's leave the HomeGroup, then create a new HomeGroup on the PC of your choice if you want.

Leave Homegroup in Windows 10 Windows 10 Network Sharing Tutorials