Too many removable disks?

My father bought a PC from yourselves a year or more ago, and it has 4-5 "removable disks" seen in My Computer....this is highly annoying and confusing when inserting a USB flash drive, as you do not know which it is to access and to eject when finishing, especially as the flash drive does not always go to last on list!!!

I believe these spare "removable disks" are the card readers, which are never used, can they be better permanently renamed easily, if so please provide instruction?

I dont think they can actually, ive often wondered about this myself. However, on my PC, none of the removable disks appear empty which is very useful, means, as soon as I plug an SD card in or osmething, THEN the right drive pops up in my comp.

Unfortunately you cannot remove these unless you physically disconnect your memory card reader. Normally when you connect a flash drive it "auto" loads up.

Which makes me think there must be a way of hiding inactive drives, ill look into it now.

EDIT: Oh lol, found it already:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/6969-drives-hide-show-empty-drives-computer-folder.html

Thanks for your help, thats the best instructions yet, unfortunately I forgot to state that I am using Vista, and the first option wasn't available, and the others did not work, which I am surprised at.

Any other ideas?

Vista doesn't include an easy way to hide those icons until the slots are used but there are a few ways to reduce the clutter.

The quick and easy way is to view the drives in My Computer as anything thumbnails or icons - basically anything except list. Above those drives there's a horizontal line - look at the right-hand end of that line as there's a small downward pointing arrow. Just click on that and the drives are hidden.

You could also simply unmount the card-slots you don't use or disable them in Device Manager. If, for example, you only ever use SD cards, disable or unmount all of the others and only have the one displayed. Unmounting can be done through the standard Windows Disk Manager - just remove the drive letter - or through a command line using the MOUNTVOL command. You can also hide drives by modifying the registry but I wouldn't go there unless you really know what you are doing.

Finally - and probably easiest -is to use one of the many applications that can hide unused drives. Many of the multi-function tweak programs include this and I'm loathe to recommend any particular one - not least because they also include "features" that can cause serious problems for the unwary user (and those who dive in before reading manuals). Some are freeware or shareware and some are commercial releases. There are also a number of freeware apps designed purely to handle this sort of "problem". Again, I can't recommend any particular one but you could start by looking at this - http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html - to see if it fits the bill. Check for reviews and feedback before using it (I haven't tried it) - or any other such app - just to be on the safe side. If nothing else, it should help suggest the sort of terms to use in Google so you can search for alternatives.

As general advise, if you are looking for this sort of app, Download.com is a good place to start. It's a reputable site and is used by Microsoft themselves to distribute some of their apps.

Thanks pengipete...understand all your advice....i am highly frustrated that this is so difficult to resolve, as I want it the way it should come out of the box, and that is that they should be hidden until used!
This is for my dad to help him, but f it was my PC, I would want similar.
I do not want to delete or disable them.
I have tried the regedit in link below, with no success, and am also loathe to install 3rd party programs. I had also just tried the one you mention, but is highly complicated, for a simple task that I want.
Its not the clutter, but the fact that they are all the same name, and the same as a USB when inserted....can i just rename them "CARDSLOT1" etc in disk management?

Ill try to look into hiding them in Vista, im sure my removal disk drives didnt appear as empty on Vista when I had it :s

Unfortunately smrph, Windows Vista Home simply doesn't do what you want.

As for renaming the slots in Disk Manager - try it and see. (just don't expect too much)

It may help to understand why the empty slots show up. Put simply, Vista treats each slot as a removable drive - just like the CD/DVD drive - and just like that optical drive, it has a default name which it uses until media - in this case, a memory card - in inserted. Just like optical drives, the name that shows when media is inserted doesn't some from the drive - it comes from the media. You can name the card BUT doing so could cause problems for other devices using that card - such as a camera - it's so it's innadvisable.

I should add that not all card-slots show up under Vista - on my laptop, where the card-reader isn't connected through a USB header, the slot is hidden until populated which suggests that its the USB slot detecting the connection that creates the icon and entry in My Computer. In theory, the card-reader manufacturer could use some sort of voltage switching to their hardware to fool the motherboard into thinking that there was nothing connected but I've yet to see one advertised as such. They could also write their own drivers and possibly achieve the same result but - again - I've not seen anything like that in practice. That doesn't mean that such things don't exist so maybe looking around for a replacement card reader would help - they're only a few quid and if yours is more than a couple of years old, you may need to replace it soon as older readers can't handle the newer cards like SDHC.

The option to hide empty drives in Windows 7 is just one of the changes from previous versions of Windows.

...one last idea...

My old Vista desktop is in bits at the moment so I can't check this - perhaps you could check yourself. Does altering the removal policy via device manager make any difference?

Thanks for your input, that's a shame...will try just a plain rename, or might have to use a 3rd party software!
I do understand what is going on, but don't agree with it, it IS highly annoying that they are visbile theer.
More annoying is that it is known and has been fixed for win7, so in theory they should apply udgrade to resolve for vista (i know you're gonna tell me that they only do what is necessary nowadays).

I should there's a more complicated reason why not because they did make the effort to release an update for reading 32gb sd cards lol.