I just got this store-branded thumb drive for free and although I was able to format the drive to get rid of all the junk files that came with it, there is something I can't seem to remove. When I insert the drive, the computer recognizes it as a removable drive, but also creates a "CD Drive" that contains all the autorun demo junk promoting the store that came with the drive initially.

Once I remove the usb drive, this CD Drive disappears too, but it comes back with every use of the usb drive. I can't delete any of the files in the "CD Drive" and can't modify them either. How can I get rid of this "CD Drive" that shows up, and just get the blank "Removable Disk" when I use this thumbdrive?

Thanks for any help.

If you formatted the drive...it's not possible for anything from its former life...to do anything to your system. Those files and file system are all erased via formatting...assuming that you formatted the entire drive.

Louis

Yes, I ran a full format on the drive, and it still comes up with this separate "CD Drive" with random files when I insert the thumb drive, even though the thumb drive contents is empty.

Also, I ran the U3 removal tool and it did not detect any drive with U3 technology, even though the thumb drive was plugged in.

Did the drive format up to the full capacity?

After the drive was re-formatted, does the virtual drive occur on any computer it's attached to, or just yours? If it only happens now on your system, the first time the drive was connected an iso and mounting software may have been installed onto your hard drive...

I have a feeling that when you did the format that you only formatted the main partition. Most U3 smart drives have a separate partition for the U3 software. You could try doing a format on the "CD Drive" partition maybe and then possibly getting rid of that second partition by right clicking on My Computer and clicking Manage. Click on Disk Management. Right click on your drive's second partition and click Delete Partition. MAKE SURE YOU ARE DELETING THE CORRECT PARTITION AND NOT DELETING ANYTHING IMPORTANT!

http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/u3/launchpadremoval.exe

Yes the drive did format to full capacity (476MB of a 512MB drive), and the virtual drive does occur on any computer it is attached to. It is 3MB in size in CDFS format. No mounting software is installed.



I checked the partitions, and there is only one partition on the thumbdrive. The CD-ROM shows up separately.



The utility does not see any U3 drives plugged in.