How to get rid of AMI virtual Floppy, Virtual CD-ROM, Virtual USB drive ...

[palosanto]

I have windows 8.1 on a dual Xeon machine.
Windows explorer and device manager show virtual drives which I don't use and they are a nuisance frankly.
I don't have any physical CD/DVD, Floppy or removable drives and I have not mounted any virtual CD-Rom with the likes of PowerIso or daemon Tools etc.
I've tried to disable AND unistall them in device manager but keep reappearing after a reboot.
How can I remove them for good ?
Thanks,

 

[JonnyDough]

You can type a simple command in any version of Windows to open Disk Management. Just type diskmgmt.msc in CMD (run) to open the disk management console. From there you can remove volumes so they don't show up in your device manager or in your computer drives list.

Or, type disk management after hitting the windows key. I'm not sure if Windows 8.1 includes this feature (I skipped Win 8) but Windows 10 does.

You might also check settings in your bios (not really a bios anymore, but still incorrectly called that), as AMI probably stands for American Megatrends Incorporated - the software developer of your UEFI. There may be an option there to limit bios to "BIOS, UEFI, or both". I would select UEFI as it has some benefits, namely boot speed.

 

[helpstar]

Which prebuilt PC is it? Gateway or Acer or similar?

Remove AMI XXXX with the normal uninstall scripts in control panel -> "programs and features" of windows

 

[palosanto]

You can type a simple command in any version of Windows to open Disk Management. Just type diskmgmt.msc in CMD (run) to open the disk management console. From there you can remove volumes so they don't show up in your device manager or in your computer drives list.

Or, type disk management after hitting the windows key. I'm not sure if Windows 8.1 includes this feature (I skipped Win 8) but Windows 10 does.

You might also check settings in your bios (not really a bios anymore, but still incorrectly called that), as AMI probably stands for American Megatrends Incorporated - the software developer of your UEFI. There may be an option there to limit bios to "BIOS, UEFI, or both". I would select UEFI as it has some benefits, namely boot speed.

JonnyDough, disk management doesn't give me options to remove the virtual drives because there are no volumes as you can see in the link below. Also the virtual floppy isn't there either.
In CMOS the phisical drives are already all UEFI and there are no options related to virtual drives. Thanks anyways.

Which prebuilt PC is it? Gateway or Acer or similar?

Remove AMI XXXX with the normal uninstall scripts in control panel -> "programs and features" of windows

Thanks but there are no AMI ocurrences installed as an app.
I built myself the rig and it works fine besides this little annoyance ...

 

[palosanto]

Probably not the most elegant solution but finally I got rid of the virtual drives by uninstalling them and adding the hardware ID's to the 'Device installation restrictions" Local group policy editor so that they don't get installed automatically on reboot.
Now they are gone. Although it bothers me not knowing where they came from in the first place ....

If anyone can think of a better solution or an answer as why they existed please post it. Thanks.

 

[helpstar]

Which motherboard is it?

Did you fresh install windows?

Any driver download helper used?

Please list all applications which are installed.

I think it's a feature of your motherboard. Is it a supermicro? Ipmi is responsible for virtual devices. Have a look into your motherboard's manual.

 

[JonnyDough]

Yeah it may be a bios setting as Helpstar is hinting at. Allows virtual instances of some of your drives maybe for security reasons.

You had drive letters assigned those drives, not sure if you could unassign those or not. I mispoke when I said volumes. Meant drive letters.

 

[palosanto]

My apologies helpstar and jonnyDough, I just saw your replies now, (for some reason I never got email notifications).
My motherboard is an Asus Z9PA-D8 (dual CPU). It's a server Mobo not because I needed the server features but it was the only available when I built my system. So it has a lot of features that I don't need and the Bios is rather complex (for me anyways). However evn if the device manager lists them as AMI and mi Bios is AMI, I couldn't find any setting that suggested enabling/disabling virtual drives.
Anyways like I said earlier, the virtual drives are now disabled in the device manager and don't show up so it works for me.