Problem with external USB drives

I have a monitor with four slots for different kinds of memory-based drives (e.g Compact Flash). These drives are connected to a USB hub within the monitor which in turn is connected to a USB port on my laptop.

Every time I start Toad Data Modeler when connected to the monitor, I get four dialogs similar to the attached. Cancelling each dialog solves the problem, but it would be nice if they didn’t show up at all.

1651.NoDisk.png

Hi - there can be a number of reasons why these problems occur including USB drives not being ejected safely or having a virus on your system. Have you ever used these drives for accessing Toad Data Modeler files?

I rarely have drives in those slots so ejection isn’t a problem and my system is clean. I have also never used these drives to access TDM files. This is a problem that goes back a very long time; I just haven’t bothered reporting it as it’s been only a minor aggravation.

Hi Kevin,

I have already had a couple of customers on support experiencing this issue, all of them having either a card reader connected on a USB port or having USB extension ports on their display.

To start, this is a Windows system issue, not a TDM issue and appears when you have any application searching for Paths/Drives on startup. I can only provide googled solutions. On support.microsoft.com/…/330137, you can find several articles by Microsoft on this issue. The error itself is not anyhow dangerous, it’s just itchy.

Workaround/Solution:

You can either turn off this annoying error message (not solving the original cause):

  1. Open regedit (Start > Run -> Type in “regedit” -> Click OK, or in Start, type “regedit” in the serach box and press Enter - Win 7)
  2. Navigate the category tree on the left, find:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Curr­entControlSet\ Control\Windows
  3. Now look for ErrorMode key on the right side panel
  4. Double click on ErrorMode, change the ‘value data’ to 2 and click on ok.
    or you can try to resolve the issue, which may be caused e.g. by a removable/network drive not currently connected (or a card reader/DVD drive) with assigned letter C or D (even formerly, not now).

Follow steps explained in Microsoft knowledge base on the link support.microsoft.com/…/330137,

or you can change a drive letter (re-map the drive) as explained e.g. on pcsupport.about.com/…/change-drive-letters-windows-7.htm.

Regards,

Lukas

The drives were relettered W-Z long ago to get them out of the way of network shares. I guess I just don’t understand why TDM is doing what it’s doing to trigger this message. I have dozens of programs installed on my system and TDM is the only program that feels the need to search for drives on startup.

Anyway, like I said, it’s a minor annoyance. I’ll live with it. Thanks for the Microsoft link, though it claims that the issue applies only to Windows XP. I’m on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

Kevin, I do understand that it’s annoying. I investigated deeper and found that it seems to be connected with our compilation of TDM in Delphi, system disk letter assignment on the build machine. If you want to help us investigate and try resolve the issue, could you tell me what your drive letter assignments are? I will pass the info to the dev lead for further investigation. I will keep you updated.

Thank you!

Lukas

Here's everything. I get exactly four messages each time, one each for \Device\Harddisk2\DR10, \Device\Harddisk3\DR11, \Device\Harddisk4\DR12, and \Device\Harddisk5\DR13, Those disks are all W-Z according to the Disk Management console.

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for additional information. I will pass it for investigation.

Anyway, do you have User Experience Feedback option enabled? If yes, try disabling it because we have found that in most cases the “No Disk…” error messages disappear then.

I will update you when I have some info.

Regards,

Lukas

That solved it, thank you. I’ll watch this thread for updates.

This still occurs with the latest version 5.4.6.12, and the workaround still works. Surely in 2 years there would be a fix besides disabling what seems like a good feature.

Hello John,

The issue is not caused by TDM itself rather than by one of its third-party components. Since the component is indispensable, the issue will most likely persist. You can always opt-out of the Feedback program or you can try workaround mentioned in this post. Note that doing this will hide all hard errors encountered in Windows.

Regards,

Lukas