Properly Uninstalling Virtual Clone Drive

[PrincipalityFusion]

Here's the situation. You go to uninstall Virtual Clone Drive and when you reboot, you find that access to your other optical drives has totally disappeared. This happended to me two times, the first when i went to uninstall an older version and replace it with a new version. I thought that if i just upgraded without uninstalling, that would solve the issue, but when i decided to move my virtual drive to another computer, i went to uninstall it and got the same result, no optical drive access after uninstall.

I remember someone talking about a registry change or something. I tried that and all i did was hose my registry. So in the quest to find a solution, i decided to go to hardware manager and uninstall the Elby Clonedrive from there. When i tried that, SUCCESS!!! I could still access my optical drives. Then i decided to uninstall the executable to see if that was the culprit. I uninstalled and SUCCESS, i could STILL see my optical drives. Rebooted, same thing, i could still see my optical drives.

To make sure i was on to something, i reinstalled the latest VCD and uninstalled (without first uninstalling the driver) and wouldn't you know, i could no longer see my optical drives.

So the point of all this is that if for some reason, you need to uninstall VCD, uninstall the optical driver first through hardware manager and then uninstall the executable.

I don't know if it's a bug or not, but it works consistently like that so i just thought that i would share.

[Webslinger]

I've sent a PM to James.

To satisfy my curiosity, please do this:

1) Uninstall Virtual Clonedrive using the regular uninstall program (or in your remove program list). Reboot

At this point, I would imagine that you can't see your optical drives.


2) Download imgburn. It's a free program: http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download
(it's also an excellent program imo)

3) Go to Tools > Filter Driver Load Order. Click "Clipboard". Then paste the information you pasted into your clipboard into your next post (ctrl-v).


4) Do whatever you have to do to get your optical drives back in Windows.


If you don't want to do this, that's fine too. I'm just curious more than anything.

[PrincipalityFusion]

I've sent a PM to James.

To satisfy my curiosity, please do this:

1) Uninstall Virtual Clonedrive using the regular uninstall program (or in your remove program list). Reboot

At this point, I would imagine that you can't see your optical drives.


2) Download imgburn. It's a free program: http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download
(it's also an excellent program imo)

3) Go to Tools > Filter Driver Load Order. Click "Clipboard". Then paste the information you pasted into your clipboard into your next post (ctrl-v).


4) Do whatever you have to do to get your optical drives back in Windows.


If you don't want to do this, that's fine too. I'm just curious more than anything.

I'll try and do this tomorrow. It's somewhat of a pain as i have to do a total image restore, so i need to connect my monitor and keyboard to the server so that i can see what i'm doing.

No biggie though, just need to make the time.

[Webslinger]

I'll try and do this tomorrow. It's somewhat of a pain as i have to do a total image restore.

Nah. Sorry, forget it then.

In Windows, if entries listed in your filter stack within your registry don't actually have corresponding drivers (files) on your hard drive, Windows will make your optical drives disappear.

[slinky]

Doesnt uninstalling the optical drives drives via device manager force windows to rebuild the drivers and filters stack at next reboot or on forced discovery of new devices ? - then you can use something like driver genius to check the update status of the drivers

[Tox]

In Windows, if entries listed in your filter stack within your registry don't actually have corresponding drivers (files) on your hard drive, Windows will make your optical drives disappear.If installed the Nero filter check will fix this at each start-up of Windows.

[Webslinger]

Doesnt uninstalling the optical drives drives via device manager force windows to rebuild the drivers and filters stack at next reboot or on forced discovery of new devices ?

Not filter stacks, no . . . and it's pretty hard to uninstall a device that Windows isn't showing in device manager.

[slinky]

fair point, but you could always uninstall the controller and reboot, much like you do when windows gets your drives locked into PIO mode

[PrincipalityFusion]

Man, you guys are talking at a level way above my pay grade. If I ever forget to uninstall the VCD driver first, i will try the controller uninstall method.

However, what i've done works before you get to that point and it just feels "safer" than uninstalling the controller (OMG, the world will end if i uninstall the controller!!:D).

Anyways, thanks for the good info.

[slinky]

its not so bad, i just dont explain things well, have a look over at the Imgburn forums, and in the FAQ there is a very good step by step guide with pictures etc, i think it was No.2 on the FAQ relating to DMA mode, have a read through and it will make more sense i'm sure.

i'm fairly sure that causes the filter stack to be rebuilt once you trigger that chain of events, but i could be wrong, filter stacks are a pain when they start going wrong, it's worse when it's a goofed up AV install that leaves a rogue filter in the TCP/IP list, thats messy !

[Webslinger]

fair point, but you could always uninstall the controller and reboot, much like you do when windows gets your drives locked into PIO mode

Again, that won't work if you have an entry listed in your filter stack within your registry that doesn't correspond with an actual driver on your hard drive.

[slinky]

Again, that won't work if you have an entry listed in your filter stack within your registry that doesn't correspond with an actual driver on your hard drive.

ah, i thought it would....

i know a couple of people that have used this free little tool for viewing filter stack entries and load order, never used it myself but it looks handy as it will dump a report, for a selected device to the clipboard should you wish.. would be interesting to see if this can see his device

http://www.bustrace.com/products/devfilter.htm


and this little tool will scan and display the filters and allow you to remove them (care must obviously be taken when using !)

http://www.cdr-zone.com/forum/download.php?id=1399



also, someone mentioned earlier about the nero filter check thing, so i did a little reading and this is what i found..

Background Task installed by Nero's CD Burning software. Straight from Ahead software : "The NeroCheck program looks for known driver conflicts with our Nero software. So that when a Nero Log file is printed, at the very bottom of the Nero log file you will find a list of drivers we have found on your system that could be causing conflicts, if you are running into problems.".

so basically, it wont tell you much other than what it thinks is bad for nero

[Webslinger]

ah, i thought it would....

i know a couple of people that have used this free little tool for viewing filter stack entries and load order, never used it myself but it looks handy as it will dump a report, for a selected device to the clipboard should you wish.. would be interesting to see if this can see his device

1. click http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=15536

2. click http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=9061 (see step 4)

The problem is that while that information shows you what's in your filter stack, the user needs to do a search on his or her hard drive to see if the corresponding driver actually exists.

[slinky]

:) ... big list of filters !

i had seen those threads, although didnt put 2+2 together with this thread! forgot img burn could list the filters, probably because i've hardly had any issues to deal with so forgot about the option,

yeah, i see what your meaning, i havent had time to see if anyone makes a tool for checking the validity of the filters vs drivers, i know there was a tool around for TCP/IP checking/repairing but dont remember an auto one for these