I added a drive to mount an .ISO using Microsoft's Virtual CD Control Panel. The first drive I added didn't work at all, so I added another. I mounted the .ISO on that drive, did what I had to do and everything worked perfectly. Except every time I start up the computer, there's a Y drive with no .ISO mounted. I can remove it fine, but it's always there and I don't want to have a blank virtual CD drive loading up every time I start my computer. Does anyone know how to get rid of something like this?

Well personally I never used Microsoft's Virtual Drive programs, because if I remember correctly, they released one a while back that sucked pretty hardcore. Personally, I prefer Alcohol120 if you are willing to pay for an excellent program to deal with ISOs or the free alternative that works great as well, which is Daemon Tools' Virtual Drive Manager.

But to directly answer the question you asked, I do not. Never messed with their software, A120 and Daemon Tools are both controlled by the programs themselves. Alcohol is seamless, easy to use and fast... Truly the best program I ever got to experience when it's Full version was free. Daemon Tools gets the job done though and I like how easy it is to use.

If you have already uninstalled VCDCP and the drive is still there, I have no clue.

As far as getting a virtual drive to only appear when you want it to, I believe poweriso lets you start the virtual service whenever you want to. You can experiment with those which do not have an auto-startup requirement and can create drives on the fly.

Personally, I use virtual drives so much that I have 8 always there. It doesn't bother me to have S-Z drive letters taken up by virutal CD Rom drives which may or may not be vacant.

These are the mounting programs I know of:
Virtual CD Control Panel - lightweight, annoying to use, only supports ISO I think.
Virtual Clone Drive - double click or context menu to mount. Supports lots of things and 8 drives. I currently use this.
Alcohol 52% - uses its own image library to mount stuff, can rip files too.
Daemon tools - system tray mount, probably has been updated since I last used it.
poweriso - cumbersome, not free, but lets you edit images.
magiciso - ^ I think it has a virtual drive program as well.

Yeah don't use something Microsoft made for that. I'm kinda surprised you did.

I recommend using Alcohol 52%, which lets you mount things and iirc correctly burn rip things as well. If you want to rip burn images you'll need the full pay-for version called 120%. Then it's just a matter of having it load the virtual drive on startup or not, and I think you can just check/uncheck something in the options or just remove it from the list of startup programs after installation.

Edit: Had it backwards.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 24 2011, 11:31 pm by CecilSunkure.

It is the other way around - Alcohol 52% lets you rip images, but has no burning tools included. The free edition of Alcohol 52% does everything I'm used to seeing with the free edition of Daemon Tools (including all the same emulations for getting around copy protections and the same great support for a large variety of image formats); but it allows 2 more virtual drives (6 instead of 4), has a great image ripper included, and the right-click menu for the virtual drive does enough that I only run the full program to rip a disc or to change settings, so I have one less system tray icon to look at (and one less program running in the background). If you do want the system tray icon, Alcohol 52%'s icon does every Daemon Tools' does, plus gives you access to the full program when you want it.

Just like the free edition of Daemon Tools, it does have an optional browser toolbar you can uncheck during the installation so that it doesn't install it (or that you can uninstall later if you forgot to uncheck it).

You can find the free edition at the very bottom of the trial download page on their web site.

Just wanted to note that I haven't actually used any recent version of Daemon Tools, though, so I don't really know what has changed.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 24 2011, 11:33 pm by ShadowFlare.

I'd imagine it would just start a process or service at startup that generates the virtual drive. Have you checked those?

You can just crack the 120% version. I did, it's nothing special.

Too much of a hassle. 52% does everything I need it to.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that is when the virtual drives are created. Have a look at your start-up processes in cCleaner or manually - there should be an entry for Microsoft VCDCP, disable or delete that entry and you -should- have resolved the problem.

That'd be my guess at least - un-installing software leaves its roots embedded in your startup and other random places. Meaning you have to manually perform a cleanup once the software is gone. 3D Studio Max is notorious for this and as such I simply don't uninstall, I have 2009, 2010, 2011 (and soon 2012) editions all installed ... Luckily all on one partition, so when 2013 comes out I'll just reformat and nuke the buggers.

Unless you have them on your OS partition that's not better than manually deleting the folders.

Yea, 3DS Max and my OS are all on the C:/

Majority of games other applications are on D;/
and all data (music, video, save files, etc) are on E:/

He thinks it actually installs to that partition.