I suddenly noticed a Q drive which was not there before

[Adam58]

all of a sudden i find i have a q drive on my computer, i can't access it and don't know where it came from

 

[whs]

Sounds like a virtual drive. Reboot and it should disappear. It probably came from you installing something. Some programs use that.

 

[Adam58]

Thanks for the quick reply but i have rebooted at least 6 times to no avail. it does not appear to be doing any harm but is just annoying

 

[z3r010]

Have you recently added a printer? (some of the newer ones have an SD card slot that automaticaly gets a drive letter)

 

[FuturDreamz]

[useless point]If you watched a lot of Star Trek then you would know who it is. [/useless post]

Now that I got that out of the way; have you changed anything recently? It might be a new printer, as they sometimes create a network drive even if it doesn't have a SD card inserted.

 

[gregrocker]

Itś a virtual drive installed with Microsoft Office 10 "Click to Run." There is no way to hide or remove the drive that I've found other than to change to non-virtual Office if you want it and have the license anyway. Hereś how: Click-to-Run: Switch to using an MSI-based Office edition - Excel - Office.com

Note that this involves uninstalling Click to Run and installing the other version. But if you don´t want Office in the first place or had it preinstalled with this virtual drive mess you can simply uninstall and be done with it.

 

[SundRance]

What about Explorer Tools, Folder options, View, "Hide empty drives ...". Is that checked? The DVD and USB drives on my computer don't show in Explorer until I load them with disc or thumb drives ...

gregrocker sounds pretty confident, but it's just a thought.

Best Wishes,
Rªnce

 

[legacy7955]

Unless you don't want MS Office starter I would just leave it alone, it is designed to behave that way and is of no issue and this is totally normal.

I have learned that the less you try and remove and add programs the more stable your OS will be .

I accidentally loaded the full edition of MS Live. I was new to Win 7 and clicked at the wrong place (blasted WU!! LOL) and the bloatware downloaded in its entirely..... a huge program too. But since I have a huge 1 TB HDD and I don't store lots of photos and video it is of no real consequence to me. I have to admit I just feel uncomfortable trying to delete/uninstall it.

 

[gregrocker]

The problem is when these preinstalled bloatware programs start up with Windows and hog CPU/RAM cycles, slow startup, can spy on you and cause other issues.

Follow these steps to tame them: Clean up factory bloatware

Since the OP never answered we don't know if he bought Office or is suffering from a trial preinstall. If he bought it then my earlier post will show him how to dump the virtual drive Q, while an unwanted preinstall can be deleted following the steps just above.

 

[Britton30]

I had Power ISO create a virtual CD drive. May be an ISO image maker/burner.

 

[arkhi]

Screenshots and a Right click on the Q: drive->Properties->Hardware would help too

 

[mjf]

I had Power ISO create a virtual CD drive. May be an ISO image maker/burner.

Crossed my mind but I found they seem to snap up lower free letters.

(I still plan to use Office 2007 but intrigued by the earlier ref to Office 2010).