Phantom local drive Q - can anyone help?

[pilgrim72]

Hi there everyone,

Just today I have noticed that in 'My Computer' a new local drive has appeared, with letter config 'Q'. It hasnt got any visible properties, and isnt accessible. I am also unable to attain any permission changes or anything with it, and it doesnt look like it manifests within Disk Management. I've not seen it before today - has anyone else seen something like this?

I'm running Win7 64bit, could the drive be the 100mb system drive that Win7 uses for things like the BitLocker encryption info, etc?

Cheers for your thoughts!

[Mike]

The 100MB system drive in Windows 7 normally has a volume label of 'System Reserved'. Does your Q drive have that? Normally you can also see that size (99.9MB).
Does this drive appear in Safe Mode?

[pilgrim72]

HHmmm... Nothing about system reserved, or even the capacity. I shall try in safe mode and then report back. Cheers Mike!

[Mike]

After a bit of snooping around I discovered that you can end up with a phantom Q drive if you install Office 2010 Beta. Do you have this installed?

[EDIT]

This seems to happen if you download Office 2010 Beta: if you click RUN instead of SAVE when you go to download the installer, this drive pops up. If you click SAVE and then run the installer as a seperate action the Q drive becomes hidden and issue is resolved.

[pilgrim72]

Aha! You are indeed a techie god Mike, and I am not worthy!

:hat:

I have just finished booting from Safe Mode, and the Q Drive was no where to be seen. I do also have the Office 2010 beta edition though! I thought that I had clicked Save instead of Run however, but obviously not!

Problem solved! Cheers Mike.

:D

[Mike]

No worries mate :)