New drive (Z:) after installing Epson on PC

GrayGhost2 said:

SUCCESS (see my next post, how I did it)
Thanks to all who helped

@roboticarm
Exactly what I wanted. How to "hide" the drive.
Your "Decimal" value 33554432 added to my understanding Binary > Decimal conversion
especially when I used the "Calc" programmers Calculator incorrectly.

@Faladu
Your link to Hide Drives from Your Computer in Windows 7 or Vista
-- excellent tutorial explained how it all works

@Kaktussoft
Thank you for your interest.
I did not delete the HKCU/Network/Z key, because I think I might have lost my WiFi connection to the printer ?

Attachment 264603

HKCU/Network/Z is just the PERMANENT drive letter for a shared folder.
NET USE Z/DELETE : This deletes it as well.
This is not about wireless whatsoever

Why hide it? You can't use Z anymore. Just delete Z pointing to the share.
How to Delete Mapped Drives in Windows 7 | 7 Tutorials

My sincere apologies to you "Kaktussoft" -- was not aware of your status on "sevenforums.com"
I did not look up your profile, I made my evaluations based on your post fronts.

How could I doubt you -- I did!
-----
Created a restore-point
Registry and manually deleted the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network\Z" key

You were right, my WiFi was not affected
Rhetorical question: Why dont Epson clean up after their installation? Very annoying.

This whole exercise has taught me a lot, thank you
---------
19-April-2013
Just discovered opening threads from email advice -- the thread does not display ANY posters credentials.
Something new every day !

GrayGhost2 said:

My sincere apologies to you "Kaktussoft" -- was not aware of your status on "sevenforums.com"
I did not look up your profile, I made my evaluations based on your post fronts.

How could I doubt you -- I did!
-----
Created a restore-point
Registry and manually deleted the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network\Z" key

You were right, my WiFi was not affected
Rhetorical question: Why dont Epson clean up after their installation? Very annoying.

This whole exercise has taught me a lot, thank you

A wifi printer is connected to your pc using wireless. To be more precise... wifi printer connects to home router. All wireless and wired computers can access it. See it as a virtual direct connection. Windows makes a virtual port. To that port the printer is connected. So it it's actual a LOCAL printer.

But the printer has also a slot to insert SD-card!! How would you access that card from your pc? Answer: the printer has sort of mini windows installed. It shares the sd card of the NETWORK just like you can share folders on your pc. On printer install the installation maps a drive letter to that share, so you can put files on it or get files from it. (at least that's what I think if you didn't do it yourself)

The sd-card is mainly meant for exchanging photo's from camera. Put sd-card from camera in printerslot and you can directly print without computer (at least that's what's in HP manual). Epson is something like that.

But you can put any file on sd card you want..it's just a small disk! You can always remap it again if you want.

Did you revert changes to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer already?

@ DeaconFrost

Post #5
The printer is accessed from my PC_1 via WiFi.
The printer is also connected to PC_2 via USB cable

So far it is all working
Thank you for your interest :)

----------------
FINAL SOLUTION
----------------

The simplest and technically logical solution to the "Z:\" drive was provided by Kaktussoft
... to delete the drive letter from ...
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network\Z

Others suggestions to "hide" the drive, did just that, but the drive was still assigned to the Epson printer.
- and Z was no longer available for other devices etc
As it turned out the Z drive was a persistent left-over from Epson install -- Epson did not clean up after the install.
Since removing the Z drive from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network ... the PC to printer has worked perfectly for 2 years via WiFi without a hitch

Kaktussoft comments in post #11 also offered an alternative way to remove Z from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network\Z

HKCU/Network/Z is just the PERMANENT drive letter for a shared folder.
NET USE Z: /DELETE : This deletes it as well.

ie, in cmd.exe

Code:

net use z: /delete

Kaktussoft's link to How to Delete Mapped Network Drives in Windows 7 is a good tutorial. It was for me !

"Hiding" Z drive as per my post #12 was a very long winded way of hiding the Z drive.

** I did undo the "hidden" "NoDrive" in Registry
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Name:= "NoDrives"
Data:= 33554432
Caution: 33554432 applies to Z drive only, if the data-value is anything else, there are other drives being hidden

But the experience with "Calc" programmers Calculator has added to my understanding of Registry data values.