Compute cannot find D or M drive.

I picked up a nasty virus by clicking on a bad url. Tried anti virus apps scans but they all said I was clean. So I did a system restore to a month ago using AOMEI. I've done this several times before with no problem. But now I cannot find the D drive. Explorer and other apps will only show files on the C drive. (The system restore function only operates on the C drive). Device manager shows D and M drives and says they are healthy but I can't access them. WTF? Fortunately I have all the data backed up on an external disk. But I am very hampered and looking for help.

Welcome! Look in the Control Panel > Windows Tools> Computer mangement> Disk management - See if you can post a screenshot? Of Disk Management.. You may want to open it up .Then consider a AV Scan. Free AV scan Free Antivirus | Trend Micro or Dr.Web CureIt! - Healing utility FULL SCANS. (might take a while.) post back with some results. Malwarebytes also. there will be more posts. good luck

remover said:

Welcome! Look in the Control Panel > Windows Tools> Computer mangement> Disk management - See if you can post a screenshot? Of Disk Management.. You may want to open it up .Then consider a AV Scan. Free AV scan Free Antivirus | Trend Micro or Dr.Web CureIt! - Healing utility FULL SCANS. (might take a while.) post back with some results. Malwarebytes also. there will be more posts. good luck

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Welcome to 11Forum @Charles Minus I want to add to removers good post above
If the disks not showing in Disk management as suggested above, also boot in to BIOS and see so all disks are listed.

Thank you for your reply. However, I have done all of those things, as I described in my original post. Disk management shows both drives as present and in "good health." In Explorer, the drives appear but cannot be selected. and when i click on them is says: D/ is not available., access is denied. I would like to run chkdsk but am unable to get administrator status because I cannot right click on the appropriate icons in explorer. It's a mess. Any ideas are more than welcome.

Charles Minus said:

Thank you for your reply. However, I have done all of those things, as I described in my original post. Disk management shows both drives as present and in "good health." In Explorer, the drives appear but cannot be selected. and when i click on them is says: D/ is not available., access is denied. I would like to run chkdsk but am unable to get administrator status because I cannot right click on the appropriate icons in explorer. It's a mess. Any ideas are more than welcome.

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Was Bitlocker set on those drives before the virus got a hold of your system?

I'm not sure but I believe so. When I got the virus, a bitdefender window came up on my screen warning of a virus, and the warning kept coming up. I did a complete scan with bitdefender but I think it may have only scanned the C: drive. It said me puter was clean. Also did Malwarebytes scan with same result. However the Bitdefender warning kept coming up. That's when I decided to do the system restore. BTW, I don't know that much about BD and have only been using it a short time. I'm going to do a quick scan now and see if it looks at D/


Back from that. I clicked on the D drive and a message up in the corner said "enter the 48 digit recover key to unlock this drive. (E351ASF4)"
Under that, in soft blue type: Load Key from USB.

So I followed instructions to the bitlocker page and found recover codes for my computer but none for this E3... number.

I never asked BD to encrypt my files and I don't think they are but my computer seems to think they are. so I don't have and encyption key and never heard of one before this debacle.
Thanks for your patience if you're still with me.
If I have to reinstall Win I think I will shoot myself.

Bitlocker keys are 48 characters long. The obvious conclusion is that your drive was Bitlocker encrypted. (I believe that encryption is the default in newer Win11 installations.)

I've never used Bitlocker, but the key is supposed to be available in your Microsoft account.

I wish you good luck.

Charles Minus said:

If I have to reinstall Win I think

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Before you do that.. with the help from others here, figure out if the drives are encrypted or not. As you are logged in to windows and probibly an ms-account. Try to solve if it is or not first... this is even more important if you haven't a new backup of recent files on those drives.
Data-recovery on encrypted disks without keys isn't possible... (unless you are unpatched for the yellowkey exploit.)

Walk.. don't run in situations like this.

I don't use Bitlocker and i never will... so i don't have anything good to pitch in on this one.
But you have others in here that do know and do use it.

Thank you for your time. Your input has been helpful. For one thing, I now know where to direct my hatred and anger - Bitdefender and Microsoft for putting it on my machine without telling me. ARRGH.