System z drive has suddenly appeared?

[mdklassen]

> a restart (or many) did not help at all for me

If you keep interrupting Windows Update (which is creating that 'Z:' drive-letter), by "restarting",

rather than letting Windows Update complete, Windows Update will recreate it, as long as it needs to recreate it.

[STWilson74]

WAWood, it is actually a "BIG DEAL" because when you have GPO mapped Drive Z: it will not work because this niusance is pre-empting the drive letter. Am I supposed to go through and change countless client GPO's just because someone decided a new behaviour wouldn't cause any problems?  So far I am only seeing this behaviour on one HP Laptop, but it happens to be the VP of Sales who carries it and the Z: drive is fairly important to our Sales team.

I am also seeing mixed reports from my research stating this is a restore partition, a UEFI partion, or a Windows Updates partition... so which is it and why is it happening? The partition is always there, I used diskpart to remove the drive letter a week ago and the VP reached out to me today, problem is back.

[mdklassen]

> ...  a restore partition, a UEFI partion, or a Windows Updates partition...

> so which is it

Windows Update created a RAM-disk, and assigns (for better or for worse) the 'Z:' drive-letter.

Have the "VP of Sales" manually launch Windows Update (there were some "non-security" updates released on 2016/10/27), let WU finish, reboot, and see "which" 'Z:' he sees, namely "mapped" or "RAM-disk".

[mickm10]

NO. You would be incorrect. No updates running. No internet connection for over 4 hours prior to the clearing and restarting. And as someone else already said - restarting by itseld did not get rid of the Z system for me. I also do not care if it's not a big deal to you or anyone else. It's annoying. I did run updates last night just to see if it came back but it did not reappear.

[mickm10]

Someone should add a 'thumbs down' so people could show negative reactions to your posts. You seem very dismissive and condescending. Just a thought for you for future posts.

[mdklassen]

> Someone should add a 'thumbs down' so people could show negative reactions to your posts. 

While you're at it, add a "shoot the [volunteer] messenger, for trying to help" button.    🙂

Sometimes, the advice you get is worth exactly what you paid for it.  🙂

[WAWood]

STWilson

OK, then ... I stand CORRECTED!!

I have literally seen hundreds of posts about this, in several different forums, and yours is the ONLY post that indicated a genuine problem with this "Z Drive" situation.

Everyone else was either whining about this sudden new "drive", or going beserk over presumptions that it was a "vack door" enabling hackers to take over their PC!!

So, in deference to your situation, I will remove the comments from my post.

Thanks for letting me know.

[STWilson74]

It does not appear to be an update RAM disk, the partition was still there with no prompt for update installation and repeated restarts and shut-downs. I admittedly did not manually run updates because when he told me he had already done the reboots and shutdowns he was at the point that he needed data for a meeting, running updates at that time wasn't going to happen.

Windows has NEVER in it's history that I can recall used the Z: drive letter for this so why now? I have no issue with telling anyone their machine needs some updates but I have a huge issue with an update inhibiting productivity by blocking GP mapped drives needed for an officer of the company to complete a deal.

I'd have to agree with the folks complaining about the tone and attitude of some of the volunteers here, I am a 15+ year veteran of this industry so understand I've seen my fair share, this Z: drive thing is just sloppy and there are good reasons that it should NOT be allowed to happen.

[STWilson74]

I got a quick look at the laptop again, there are no critical or important updates available on it. The partition is still present but does not have a drive letter. It is 360 MB in size and based on what I have seen it looks to be an EFI partition, not updates related. I found almost identical symptoms on a post in another forum except that they don't indicate it may come back, I had used diskpart to remove the drive letter a week ago and it came back on this laptop.

[mdklassen]

> I had used diskpart to remove the drive letter a week ago 

Since it shows-up in "Disk Management" (GUI) or "diskpart" (command-line), it really exists on the disk-drive.

One of the Windows 10 updates on October 26, 2016 was a "Servicing Stack Update", namely an update to Windows Update.  Maybe, it accessed the EFI partition, to update that partition, in addition to the "active" partition -- the 'C:' drive?

Are you able to show the date/time stamps on all the files (hidden and non-hidden) on 'Z:' ?

Are any "recent" ?