Windows 10: Phantom Drives?

How can I get rid of these "phantom drives"?

:)

 

Lumia 1520 Swipe/Tap Bug - Screen Sensitivity - Phantom Taps

See these threads:

Lumia 1520 phantom touch solution.

Phantom touch theory. If you have phantom touch, please read.

Solved ALL the 1520 Touch problems!

 

Windows 10 (Dell Inspiron 13-7359) wakes up from sleep with an odd prism pattern (need rebooting each time)

Thank you very much! It was greyed out so that part helped a lot too.

Many thanks!

 

From what little I could see on the 2 bottom entries I'd consider they may actually be references to Folders on a drive, i.e. Volume suggests a reference to a drive/volume label and the following group of characters is a Folder. This is an example of such a Folder on my D: drive:
Attachment 33272

 

That makes sense. I did have this issue when I upgraded from Windows 7 to 8.1 but I cant remember how to view what the files are/and how to remove them.

 

How about right clicking on the start flag and selecting Disk Management and post a screenshot of that. We can go from there.

 

I have not deleted the previous installation files from Windows 8.1 as of yet. maybe it's part of the issue, I'm not sure.

 

1) The previous installation files from Win 8.1 are on your C: drive and are not part of what you are calling phantom drives. If you are sure you're not going back to Win 8.1 you can delete them with the Disk Cleanup Tool (after scanning first for files you then click on the system files option at lower left and it will scan again and put more checkboxes you can select in the list). Otherwise, I think the system deletes them 30 days after you upgrade to Win 10.

2) Each one of the 5 drives shown in your defrag window are one of the 6 partitions shown in the Disk Management graphic for your Disk 0. So, they aren't "phantom drives" in the sense that these partitions actually exist on Disk 0 and it's not something I would recommend taking lightly as something to get rid of. I too have these partitions shown in defrag and some can be defragged and some can't, I'm only defrag/optimizing my C: drive.

3) I see 7 partitions listed in your Disk Management list above the graphic layout. That's because your OEM recovery partition ( D: ) has a duplicate entry in the Disk Management table. This isn't surprising as the Disk Management console is not quite up to snuff in accuracy for GPT partitioned disks which I'm assuming yours is.

4) Each of the partitions serves an OS function (for old 8.1 or new 10). Some can be eliminated if you really know what you're doing but it's not to be taken on lightly and without exact external disk images on hand that you are confident you can always roll back to if it goes sideways on you.

5) IF you get to a point where you'd like to do a clean install of Windows 10, i.e., you're willing to deal with backing up your data for restore AND reinstalling any programs you have (aside from HP fluff programs you decide you don't need), it will be a simple matter to wipe out every one of those partitions as part of the clean install and have Win 10 only install what it needs. At that point, your OEM (HP) recovery partition may not longer be relevant - although myself I made separate recovery media for factory restore (Dell) BEFORE I started the Win 8.1 to Win 10 upgrade and was willing to delete the Dell recovery partition.

If you end up doing the clean install, you will still probably see at least one of what you are calling "phantom drives" in your defrag interface.

SO, this is probably more info. than you expected but I hope at least you can see that these "phantom drives" are something you don't necessarily want to just get rid of without being aware of the consequences.

 

Yeah, after Windows 10 came out I clean installed which i'm sure the reason for the drives. I will probably get rid of the install files eventually once the 30 day window is elapsed to reclaim space.

If I honestly had to go back to Windows 8.1 I created recovery media for it and my 7 computer as well.

 

I hope you clean installed AFTER you did the free upgrade and made sure that the upgrade to Win 10 was actually activated. Can you confirm that your clean install of Win 10 is properly activated?

The CLEAN install is when you could have gotten rid of those extra partitions.

 

I had something similar after I updated from Win 7 to 10. I got rid of all the partitions that should not have been their without having to do any clean install. But, like you just typed YOU must know WHAT your doing when deleting any partition. AND make a complete system backup 1st!! before playing with your partitions. I used a partition manger called MiniTool Partition Wizard ISO version 9. I made the bootdisk then booted to minitool, changed 3 partitions, worked VERY well, didn't need any clean install. and its a FREE program. *Smile