Windows 10: USB Stick wrongfully identifies as a “CD Drive”

Our Alienware Windows 10 laptop has a quirk. Any USB stick PnP identifies as a CD Drive , not a USB Drive. Mostly this works fine, but some software cannot locate a removable drive and fails. How can I change this behaviour?

:)

 

Installing windows off of a USB stick

Step By Step from vista:
From admin cmd prompt

1. diskpart
1a. list disk
2. select disk 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

Copy Windows Vista's DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ (d being your vista cd and e being your usb stick)

And that's it, boot off your usb disk

 

clean possibly infected flash drives and CD-RWs

Your steps in post #1 should work for 99% of viruses that may be on a usb flash drive. However, there are a very few viruses that can infect the MBR of a drive. I would use Diskpart from a command prompt (Admin) to clean them. In the command prompt type DISKPART then, at the Diskpart prompt use the commands:

LIST DISKnote the disk number of the usb and use it in place of # in the command:SELECT DISK #
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

After this you will have cleaned the partition table from the usb and created a partition using the whole of the the available space. You can then format this partition in File Explorer.


For a CD-RW, if you right-click on it in File Explorer there is an Erase option.

 

CD drive error

1) Close all open programs
2) Click on Start, Run, and type REGEDIT and press Enter
3) Click on the plus signs (+) next to the following folders

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SYSTEM
CurrentControlSet
Control
Class
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
4) This folder is the DVD/CD-ROM Drive Class Description in the registry. Look for any of the following names in the right hand column.

UpperFilters
LowerFilters
UpperFilters.bak
LowerFilters.bak
5) If any of the above keys shown in step 4 are listed, right-click on them and choose Delete
6) After deleting the keys, close the Registry Editor
7) Reboot your computer
8) Open My Computer and check to see if your CD or DVD drives have returned. You may also want to open Device Manager and verify that the yellow exclamation and error code on the CD or DVD drive is gone.

And it likely has something to do with the emulated drive you have listed there.