Strange extra icons in Vista - My Computer

sophie_maxwell

I've done a screenshot so it should be easier to see what I'm rabbiting on about



I don't know what all these removable drives are under My Computer - or what the two HDD's (C & D) are either.

It's a new computer which has a single HDD at 250GB however the HDD is and C: appears to be some weird "OS". When I do use my usb pendrive it causes chaos with me not knowing which one to click to access data.

I can click "Safely Remove Hardware" and it displays them all as a single group, and when I click them it says safe to remove. Then the extra removable drives disappear and I'm left with C and D hard drives...

Anyone know why this is happening and how to sort this out?

Thank you :T

Sophie

Browntoa

C: is the main hard disk , including Vista

d: is the recovery Partition...for restoring the Pc...it should be there (but is protected to stop it being deleted)

the others will be card readers for SD cards etc, this sort of thing in the front

sophie_maxwell

Thanks Browntoa that explains the HDDs but why do the extra removable drives have to pop up in the first place if all I'm doing is inserting a USB pen drive? I've not even used the card readers yet!

Browntoa

mine shows them all the time

even if they are not in use

sophie_maxwell

OK I guess there's no way to change the settings for that? I think the USB drive is usually the last one, something like J: it's just confusing to start with.

I guess I'll ask here instead of starting another thread but in that same screenshot the brown standby button puts the computer into standby and the other one locks it. I've looked into taskbar properties to change those to restart & shut down (which is far more common for me) but can't - is this one of the other features I need to just get used to?

Browntoa

someone else may answer that one, I'm an XP boy, played a bit with vista but not really sure

pault123

Browntoa wrote: »

someone else may answer that one, I'm an XP boy, played a bit with vista but not really sure

I had a 52 in 1 card reader and in XP and Vista it adds about 9 logical drives which i've never been able to disable. I bet they use up system resources as well so I unsintalled it and just use a cable for my camera and phone much simpler and quicker

sophie_maxwell

You know something, I'm sure Vista was supposed to have some kind of menu where you could select programs from it, from the desktop. No sign of that

BillScarab

What menu do you mean? You've got the normal 'All Progams' list on the start menu. Or you can just tyoe the name in the search box. Also there's a separat menu for the games, not aware of any sort of menu on the desktop though.

sevlow

sophie

you can configure the function of the power button in Visa by going to;

control panel/system maintenance/powe options

in the left hand bar you will see the option "choose what the power button does" - you can set up your own preference there

sophie_maxwell

BillScarab wrote: »

What menu do you mean? You've got the normal 'All Progams' list on the start menu. Or you can just tyoe the name in the search box. Also there's a separat menu for the games, not aware of any sort of menu on the desktop though.

I remember there being an advert some time back (when it was known as Longhorn) about a menu which sat on your desktop and allowed easy access to applications such as word processor, etc. No need to open start menu. Not that I'm complaining :A I just remembered and wondered if perhaps they had scrapped the feature.

sevlow wrote: »

sophie

you can configure the function of the power button in Visa by going to;

control panel/system maintenance/powe options

in the left hand bar you will see the option "choose what the power button does" - you can set up your own preference there

Thanks, is there a way to configure the 'lock' button as I'd rather that said standby. I never use lock computer as there's no need to. I shut it down when I'm away and for short periods I use standby or leave it on. Seems strange they've made the lock computer so prominent