Microsoft is always trying to reduce Windows OS vulnerability to viruses that are causing some serious troubles to the users. Although, their efforts are doing some good but still, there are lots of loose spots where hackers can get access. Windows users experience a strange issue with their partitions while trying to open them and display an Open With window asking the users to select a program from the list in order to open the selected local drive. Some users can open the C drive i.e. Windows drive but other drives become inaccessible as they don’t find any way to open them.
What are the Causes of this Problem?
This problem usually occurs when a virus is injected inside the Windows OS. It creates a file called autorun.inf inside the root folder of every partition on the hard drive. This autorun.inf file executes different tasks in order to modify registry values which ensure that the virus should be loaded at every startup. In this way, partitions on the hard drive cannot be accessed normally and hence, it causes some serious issues.
Solutions to Fix this Problem:
This problem can be fixed in a number of ways. The best possible methods to solve this issue are listed under.
Note: This method only fixes the problem with local drives. It doesn’t protect you from the threats inducted by the viruses.
Method # 1: Deleting the autorun.inf file from the Partitions
The best way to fix this issue is to delete the autorun.inf file present inside the root of each partition on the hard disk. To do this, follow the steps mentioned below.
- Open the command prompt by pressing Win + R shortcut key and typing cmd inside the box. Click OK to open the Command Prompt window.
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- Inside the Command Prompt console, type the following commands one by one followed by the Enter key after each command.
del c:\autorun.* /f /s /q /a
del d:\autorun.* /f /s /q /a
del e:\autorun.* /f /s /q /a
Replace c, d and e with your own partition labels. In a majority of cases, these labels would be same. You need to do it for all of your partitions whether you have one or many. This set of commands will delete all the autorun.inf files created by Trojan/ virus. Restart the system after the process in finished.
Method # 2: Deleting one of the Registries (Mountpoints2)
If the above mentioned method doesn’t solve your problem, then you can follow this method to get rid of this issue with your partitions.
- Open Registry Editor by pressing Win + R and typing regedit inside the box followed by the Enter
- After the editor is opened, press Ctrl + F on the keyboard and write mountpoint2 in order to find the relevant registries. After it is found, write click over the folder called mountpoint2 on the left pane and select Delete. Do the same step multiple times until all the mountpoint2 folders are deleted. Restart your PC afterwards.
Method # 3: Registering Shell32.DLL File
If none of the above mentioned method works, then this might be a lender of last resort for you. In this scenario, you would be required to register the shell32.dll file for the sake of resolving this problem.
- Open Run by pressing Win + R and type regsvr32 /i shell32.dll followed by the Enter key. After it executes the command, you will see a message stating that the process succeeded.
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