BleepingComputer.com: Hard drives are not showing in 'My Computer'

When I open up the My Computer folder, it only shows devices with removable storage (Floppy drive, CD/DVD drive, etc.). My C: drive and my external Western Digital 1 TB K: drive are not shown anywhere on my computer. I've already made another profile to see if they showed up there, but they don't. Can anyone help me with this? I will attach a picture so you can see what I'm talking about.

This post has been edited by Captain Meeeee: 12 June 2010 - 02:42 AM

I ran into this exact issue on a friends system that I was working on recently
The drives dont show in My Computer or Disk Management yet everything works fine

Has me totally stumped!

Hi Captain,

Do your drives even show up in Disk Management? Right click on My Computer, then select Manage. You can check both your Device Manager and Disk Management from there. All of your drives should be listed in both locations. If they show up in Disk Management, right click on them, you may have to reassign the drive letters or mark the partitions as active. If they don't show up, I'm stumped as well.

When I go to Disk Managment, both of my drives are shown. However, there are two blank spaces above the drives, and I don't know if they should be there or not (I'll put up another picture). Also, in Device Manager both drives are shown without any problems.

Your primary drive has three partitions. Your system partition, an EISA configuration partition, and a third unknown partition. The system partition is of course your primary drive containing the operating system, installed programs, and any data or personal files that you have saved to it. The EISA configuration partition is an outdated (in most cases) utility partition used in conjunction with ISA and EISA devices. The unknown partition is usually found when some third party backup or restore application has been utilized. This may be somehow related to your hard drive hide and seek issue.

I've never had a EISA Configuration partition, at least to my knowledge, and I've never used third party recovery systems so this is new ground to me as well. I understand that you can delete both partitions without any adverse effect, but you may want to wait until someone with a little experience in these matters has a chance to weigh in. In the meantime, try this. Maybe we can get a little more information to work with.

From the Start menu, select Run and type in cmd. At the command line type in diskpart. This will bring up a diskpart prompt. At this prompt, type in list volume, should look like the prompt below.

DISKPART> list volume

Press Enter and post the results. You'll then need to type in Exit to quit Diskpart and Exit again to quit the Command Prompt.

It got kind of messed up in copying, but here's my results:

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 D DVD-ROM 0 B
Volume 1 E DVD-ROM 0 B
Volume 2 N DVD-ROM 0 B
Volume 3 J WD SmartWar UDF CD-ROM 644 MB
Volume 4 C NTFS Partition 228 GB Healthy System
Volume 5 K My Book NTFS Partition 1397 GB Healthy
Volume 6 F Removeable 0 B
Volume 7 G Removeable 0 B
Volume 8 H Removeable 0 B
Volume 9 I Removeable 0 B

The EISA configuration Partition is for Older ISA and EISA device configuration. Depending on your current system configuration it could be in use when you boot your system. The ISA standard lives on in LPC interface (Low pin Count) and is generally used for serial ports. I doubt this is the problem with the system. It looks like windows explorer is faulty. Are you able to access the drive in IE? In the address bar type C: see if it lets you browse the drive.

I can access the drives fine by typing them into the address bar. The drives still work, its just a pain to get to them. The only time I can't access them is when I'm in the Save As window or Open window.

This post has been edited by Captain Meeeee: 13 June 2010 - 12:43 AM

Do they show with a RIGHTCLICK on the start button and explore?

Whole new day Captain, let's try this.

Follow the link below, download and install TweakUI from Microsoft. You'll find TweakUI in the column to the right.

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP

After it's installed, run the program. From the menu on the left, double-click My Computer. Then select Drives and make sure all of your existing drives are checked. If not, place a check in the appropriate box and click Apply, give it a moment then click OK and check the results. Hopefully, that will do it. If not, then you've got a new toy.

Got my fingers crossed,
Bill

DaChew, on Jun 13 2010, 03:47 AM, said:

Only the C drive is showing in the left panel; however, I can make either show there if I use search and type C: or K:

Brother Bill, on Jun 13 2010, 06:55 AM, said:

Every drive listed had already been checked, unfortunately they still do not show in My Computer.

Captain Meeeee, on Jun 14 2010, 04:04 AM, said:

Well,I guess it's back to scratching our heads. Don't you just love a challenge? At least when it's on someone else's machine.

Tell me this, have either of these drives been mapped or hidden by chance?

I'm sure that it won't be something this simple, but to get back to the basics for a moment, open up My Computer and select Tools from the menu bar. Then open Folder Options and select the File Types tab. In the Registered file types section, select Drives and click on the Advanced button. In the Actions box, there should be an entry for Find. Verify this, and click on OK. If not, let us know, I'll check back later today.

*Afterthought*
While you're in the Folder Options menu, you could go to the View tab and restore the defaults. As I said, I doubt it will be anything this simple but we might as well cover all the bases while we're at it.

This post has been edited by Brother Bill: 14 June 2010 - 07:53 AM

Brother Bill, on Jun 14 2010, 05:22 AM, said:

Everything checks out, but still no drives. And reverting to the defaults did not help.