Mapped drive still exists after VM has been deleted

[milha02]

I need help with VMWare Workstation 6.0.3 on Windows Xp.

I mapped a drive from a virtual machine hard disk and on to a V: on my physical machine. Now I forgot abount the drive mapping and have deleted the virtual machine. (VMWare service was stopped at the time including vmount2.exe). Now the drive is still shown and is inaccessible (of course). Since I do not have the virtual machine any more I cannot disconnect the mapped drive from the workstation GUI.

Also if I try to map a new virtual machine drive the V: is not available.

My question is how do I manually remove this drive mapping? I searched the different vmware folders and registry but I cannot find where this is configured. So please assist.

Regards Hans Milling...

[AWo]

You explanation is somewhat difficult to follow, at lkeast for me. Can you explain it in more detail what you did and what you're facing, now?

Did you use the VMWare Sharded Folder option or do you talk about a Raw Device Mapping?

AWo

[milha02]

I at some point edited the vertual machine settings, selected the hard disk and in the utilities selected "map...". Then mapped the virtual hard disk as drive V: on the machine running vmware.

Then later on the VMWare services was stopped and the virtual machine was erased, and then the vmware services are started the mapped drive still exist and I have no way of deleting it.

See attached screenshots...

[continuum]

Look into the docs for net.exe - AFAIK there is a command to remove those stale mappings

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[milha02]

NET USE does not reveal any mapped drives, no does the "file -> Map og disconnect virtual disks" from the vmware workstation gui.

Hans...

[AWo]

What about right-clicking on the drive and choosing "Disconnect virtual disk"?

AWo

[milha02]

That option is not available for this drive where the virtual machine has been deleted. If I map an existing vertual machine file then I get this option.

Hans...

[Peter_vm]

Right click on My Computer object icon on your XP desktop and "Disconnect Network drive".

[milha02]

There are no mapped drives listed here either. I guess VMWare installs the drive as a virtual physical disk or something similar. Only that the drive is not listed in the device manager in any way so the vmount2.exe must be doing this. If I stop the virtual disk drive service the drives disappear and they show up again after I start the service.

Hans...

[continuum]

If nothing else works - open regedit - browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

and delete the key \DOS|Devices\V: and the key wihich starts with
?\Volume ... that uses the same data as the dos-devices key

If unsure post HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[AWo]

Hmmm, when I do this mapping (but the guest still exists) the drive doesn't appear under this RegKey. I'm still searching for it in the Registry.

AWo

[continuum]

Yes - normally the driveletter does NOT appear here - but I guess OP has already rebooted and I don't know where else such a mapping would appear ?

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[milha02]

That did the trick. There were no \DosDevices\V: but there were an entry with \??\Volume{... that did not match any of the existing \DosDevice\ volumes. I stopped the vmount2 service, deleted this key and rebooted. Now the invalid drive is gone.

Thank you very much.

Hans...

[AWo]

I can't delete the .vmdk or the guest as long as this mapping is active. I get a message telling me that one or more disks are busy. Have you looked in the guests folder if it still exists (like inmy case)? I re-added it to the Workstation GUI via "opening an existing VM and deleted the mapping.

I even can't delete the .vmdk file from the host as long as this mapping exists.

AWo

[milha02]

If you close the VMWare Workstation GUI and then stop the "VMware Virtual Mount Manager Extended" service then you can delete the folder containing the mapped vritual machine.

Hans...