You and I both know the reason why users never see the *nix admins is because we usually have a ratio of 500 plus users for every admin.

The system is usually locked down so all they can screw around with is there dot files in thier home directory and if they abuse that to often they get the edit rights removed from them as well.

And usually a unix user is a hellva lot more savy than your average windows user. The usual support call from a *nix users is I am trying to do xyz and we are missing some libary's then sends a screen dump of the error. Where as a windows user usually just says this stupid computer isn't working again fix it. When you eventually track them down you find out they have a cyrix session to a computer in a different country and its that machine thats kanckard.

Also application rollouts seem to have alot more planning and testing done before they get squirted in *nix enviroment.

If you've installed a front panel extra which has options for plugging in other devices, including one or several flash (usb) drives and possibly a card reader, these various "drives" can linger on in My Computer even when they are not actually hosting an external device. It seems to be part of the installation software that they remain as potential physical drives when the devices they play host to are absent.

I have these on two of my XP boxes, and that's what I see here.

Regards,
FoR

Thanks folks for all the suggestions. FullOpposite, I didn't install a front panel reader but did have an external one. Now taken it out.

SADLY, DO NOT HAVE THE OPTION "HIDE EMPTY DRIVES IN THE COMPUTER FOLDER" UNDER OPTIONS/VIEW.

Hence, icons still there !

As a wee bit of a drift are you still running the orginal linux cut down that your aspire one came with?

After a quick search I found a site that will show you where all the screws are to add memory so I stuck an extra 1G in.

I then put Fedora on it and boy does it rock now. No driver issues at all.

And its worth while finding out about the black screen of death on the aspire ones. The BIOS goes tits up and you have to reblow it. If you already have a USB stick with it on, you can sort it in 3 mins if you don't its a right pain in the bum.

A Laugh For Everyone
 

1) Using Administrator, deleted the four Kingston drives F G H I shown in "My Computer" (which since I have them all unplugged, shouldn't be there anyway).

2) "For changes to take effect, you will need to restart your computer...do you want to do this now...?"

3) Yes

4) Grind grind whir whir

5) Screen comes up

ZARKING FARDWARKS !

6) "Windows has detected new hardware....device drivers being installed...etc etc"

7) All four icons for non-existent drives F G H I are back in "My Computer" despite being physically removed and no other drives plugged in anywhere (except my LaCie backup hard drive).

Fun, isn't it !

Ofso - I think you still have yet to tell us which OS, but did you read post #20?

XP with SP3 installed. Post 20, info excellent. I suspect problem is de minimus compared with task of removing unused drive icons.

Interesting how my XP detected a USB drive when none was plugged in and set up the driver for it.

Ah well, back to JB/Limericks.

Thanks all !

Try redoing it and then cleaning out the registry using CC Cleaner before restarting.

I still think there is something suspect with the user profile.

After the clean try creating another account.

Just a thought

Could it be possible that some "nasty" has transferred from the usb stick and is fooling the system into thinking that the drive is there so it can sit on the computer doing whatever it is designed to do without antivirus, etc, discovering it?

Could be worth running Malwarebytes Antimalware as well, just to be sure.....

MS PowerToys for WIN XP did it. Untick the boxes and away we go (or rather, away THEY go). Thanks BOAC !

TweakUI
 

More precisely, this is TweakUI from MS Power Toys.