A: Drive Disappears from Windows Explorer

ISSUE:

The A: drive will randomly disappear from your Windows Explorer Window while Faster Suite is running.  

Although the A: drive is not displayed in Windows Explorer, Faster Drive continues to run.  If you open Word and use the recent files list to open a document that you previously worked on via Faster Drive, it will still open.  This would not be possible if Faster Drive were not functional.

Also, if you open a command prompt and change to the A: drive and list the directory contents using DIR, you will see the full contents of the A: drive root displayed. 

Both of these symptoms show that Faster Drive is still functional, but Windows is failing to display the A: drive in Windows Explorer Windows.

This issue has been found to happen with the most recent update of Windows 10.  It is as of yet unknown if this also affects Windows 11 computers.

WORKAROUND:

To get the A: drive to show back up you can end task on Windows Explorer, and then restart the process using the steps outlined below.

1. Open any Windows File explorer window like the one shown below.

2. Right click any open space on the task bar and choose Task Manager  

3. In the list of processes find Windows Explorer

4. Right click on Windows Explorer and choose End Task 

 DON'T BE ALARMED.  This will cause your start menu, task bar, and any Windows Explorer windows to close.  It will look as if you have broken your computer.  You have not.  Proceed to the next step and all will be restored.

5.  Restart the Windows Explorer process.  Depending on the version of Windows you're running you will either click File>Run new task.  In Windows 11 you will click the Run new task button near the top right of the Task Manager window.

6.  In the dialog that opens type explorer.exe in the text box.  If there is text already in the textbox, replace it.

Click OK.

7.  Your start menu and task bar will reappear now.

8. Open any Windows File Explorer and the A: drive will reappear.

The instructions below are for IT professionals or users familiar with batch file creation.

The batch file script shown below will stop Windows Explorer, wait 500 milliseconds, and then restart Excplorer.exe.  If a user frequently experiences this issue, you could place this batch file on their desktop as a quick way for them to get Windows to display the A: drive in Windows Explorer

@echo off
tasklist /fi "imagename eq explorer.exe" | find /i "explorer.exe" >nul

if errorlevel 1 (
    echo Windows Explorer is not running.
    echo Starting a new Windows Explorer task.
    echo.
    timeout /t 5 >nul
    start explorer.exe
    exit /b
)

echo Ending the Windows Explorer task.
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe >nul

echo Waiting for 500 milliseconds.
ping -n 1 -w 500 127.0.0.1 >nul

echo Starting a new Windows Explorer task.
start explorer.exe