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So yesterday I wanted to hide the System Reserved drives :E and :F from showing up in This PC. I followed the advice in this link How do I hide the System Reserved partition?. After I did this all my drives disappeared from This PC. I tried adding the letters back to fix it but it did not.

To try and fix it I went back to the link and only just saw the bottom comment by Ben N this morning. I tried to follow what he said but I didn't really know what to do once I got to the binary part so I thought I'd better ask instead of changing things.

So if anyone knows how to bring my drives back into This PC - even if the System Reserved ones come back too then that would greatly appreciated.

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Sala123
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1 Answers1

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Assuming Windows is still operating as normal....

I noticed you tried adding the letters back, but have you done the exact following and restarted? Worth a try before anything else.

  1. Open "Disk Management", available by right clicking the start menu on Windows
    10, its inside "Administrative Tools" -> "Computer Management" if you must
    find it manually.
  2. You should then see all your drives, however the "missing" ones will not
    have drive letters assigned - now identify the right drive.
  3. Right click on it in Disk Management, and select "Change Drive Letter and
    Paths"
  4. Then click the "Add" button and select a letter for the drive before clicking
    OK.
  5. Check Windows Explorer, let me know if it worked / we need to try something
    else.

This may bring back all the drives, however that is a step towards the full solution you're looking for.

Edit:

Check the following registry keys to see if the drive's are registered as mounted with the correct drive letters (don't worry about renaming it):

Registry Path

I am assuming when you added drive letters back you used the same letters and checking Disk Management after reboot shows that the letters are staying assigned to the drives.

Sam

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  • That is exactly what I did before. All the drives are missing from This PC still. – Sala123 Mar 06 '16 at 12:26
  • Okay, scratch the above then, I'll modify it. – Unencoded Mar 06 '16 at 12:50
  • Yeah I put the same letters back onto the correct drives and they stayed on Disk Management. – Sala123 Mar 06 '16 at 13:50
  • They show up in that registry location but still not in explorer too? This certainly qualifies as strange. – Unencoded Mar 06 '16 at 14:02
  • Yep. Is there a way to add them back using what Ben N was talking about the bottom of the page in the link? – Sala123 Mar 06 '16 at 14:11
  • Kind of - he is explaining how to get to your current situation, where drives are still assigned drive letters but certain drives (technically partitions) do not show up in explorer. The problem is that this relies on things showing in explorer before you can make registry tweaks to hide things, instead of removing the drive letters. What changes did you make in the registry? – Unencoded Mar 06 '16 at 14:36
  • I didn't change anything in the registry. I only removed and reapplied the letters to the drives through disk management. – Sala123 Mar 06 '16 at 14:48
  • Then I am afraid I am rather stumped - I can't recreate the problem here. As a last ditch effort maybe try adding drive letters to every partition and drive that you need to (and can), but use different drive letters to their originals. I'm not holding my breath though, hopefully someone else can chip in here. – Unencoded Mar 06 '16 at 15:02