I liked the default settings on the start menu and have lost one.

Question

the down arrow icon on the start menu keeps going to or looking for a removeable disk. How do I reset this to the default C drive?

Answer 1

Hello Craig Kniff, welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

I'd be happy to help you get this sorted out, but I need to see what you're looking at to understand the issue better.

Please share a screenshot showing the down arrow icon on the start menu (make sure to cover any personal information).

Once I can see what's happening, I'll walk you through the fix.

Answer 2

The behavior matches a known issue where a removable drive is assigned to drive letter C, so the system keeps looking for that removable disk. To reset it back so the internal C: drive is used normally, change the drive letter of the removable drive to something else.

Follow these steps (Windows XP example from context; the same logic applies in later versions):

1. Log on with an account that has administrator rights.
2. Insert a disk into the removable drive that is causing the issue.
3. Open Computer Management:
   • Select Start → right-click My Computer (or This PC) → Manage.
4. In the left pane, select Disk Management.
5. In the lower-right pane, find the removable drive whose letter is currently set to C: (or the drive letter that is causing the problem).
6. Right-click that partition/volume and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
7. Select the removable drive entry, click Change, and assign it a different letter (for example, E: or F:), then click OK.
8. Close Computer Management and restart the PC.

After this, the system will no longer treat the removable drive as C:, and the Start menu item should stop looking for the removable disk.

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References:

• "There Is No Disk in the Drive. Please Insert a Disk into Drive \Device\harddisk\Dr1" Error Message When You Start Your Computer
• Microsoft does not support changing the location of the Program Files folder by modifying the ProgramFilesDir registry value