unknown F: USB Mass Storage Device

This is going to be a long winded post, but I want to give as much info as I can with the problem I’m having. I worked on my neighbor’s Dell Dimension 3100 desktop pc recently.

SYMPTOMS:
1. VERY slow
2. Occasional BSOD = Beginning Physical Memory Dump
Physical Memory Dump Complete

REMEDIES TAKEN:
1. Ran Trendmicro Housecall. Minor threats found and removed, but wouldn’t fix a
macro vulnerability in MS Word 2000.
2. Ran Adaware 2008 Free, Spybot S&D, A Squared Free, Hijack This, CCleaner.
Removed all threats, etc. successfully.
3. Upon numerous reboots the BSOD with the same message indicated above
reappeared and the pc would freeze.
4. Replaced a bad RAM stick with a known good one.
5. Formatted and reinstalled Win XP with the Dell provided disk and Dell provided
drivers disk. All went well with no more BSODs.
6. Reinstalled all the latest versions of Adaware Free, Spybot S&D, A Squared Free,
Hijack This, CCleaner along with the latest definitions where applicable. Deep
scanned with all in Safe Mode just to be sure. Obviously, no threats found.
7. Reinstalled all her personal software and All Windows updates including SP3.
All worked flawlessly.
8. Connected to the Internet--no problems there. Man, I’m on a good roll now so I
returned the pc to her so she could reinstall her printer since all seemed to be
working OK.

Got a call from her last evening and she said she was having problems installing her
printer so I led her thru the uninstall procedure via the HP disk uninstall option. Rebooted the pc and tried to reinstall the printer again. This time the “Found New Hardware Wizard” popped up. We didn’t go any further with that and I had her end that task via Task Manager. The printer installation completed successfully (according to what it said), but didn’t put an HP printer program group into the All Programs list. The printer will print and copy a document, but will not scan. This, I suspect is because the printer did NOT install completely after all.

I then had her reboot and the “Found New Hardware Wizard” reared its ugly head again, so I asked her to check the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon in the System Tray. It showed an F: USB Mass Storage Device along with her printer as well. The F: USB
Mass Storage Device also shows up in Windows Explorer as a DISK drive if she told me correctly.

Now, to finally get to the point of this post--there is NO USB Mass Storage Device connected to the pc (external HD, flash drive, etc.). What is this device and is the “New Hardware Wizard” looking for this F: device? I was wondering if anyone can give me some ideas as to what this “phantom” device is and how to find out what “New Hardware Wizard” is wanting to install? I plan to go over in a couple of days and am trying to pick your brains for a solution(s).

The only devices connected via USB are the Dell keyboard, Dell mouse, and her HP 7100 printer, scanner, copier with fax--all connected to the rear panel USB ports. There is nothing connected to the 2 front panel ports.

I’m not so concerned with the printer problem as I believe I can fix that once I lay my own beady little eyes on the situation myself. (Kinda hard to fix ’em over the phone).

Thanks in advance for any and all ideas that I can try when I get my hands on that machine from hell.

Dell Dimension 3100
Windows XP Home Edition SP3
HP 7100 printer, scanner, copier with fax
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz
Intel 915GV chipset
512MB DDR2 SDRAM
USB 2.0 X 6 ports (2 front, 4 rear)
PCI X 1, PCI Express X1 X1 expansion slots
ACPI/APM power configuration
Hyper Thread Technology Ready
80GB EIDE HD
DVD +/-RW (D:, E)
Integrated 10/100 network card, Ethernet + Fast Ethernet

 

The F: drive ( USB Mass Storage device ) could be the card reader that this printer comes equipped with. Hope this helps!

 

Novice, thanks for giving me an idea to ck. out. This makes sense to me that it might indeed be just that, but would u have any ideas on how I might b able to determine if this drv. letter is a printer card reader?