Fixing the Qttask.exe “No Disk” Error

Every now and then when I am sitting at my Windows XP system, an annoying error message just pops up out of nowhere. The title bar is a seemingly random four-digit hexadecimal value followed by “qttask.exe – No Disk”. The text of the message says “There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive XX:.” At the bottom is the typical Cancel, Try Again, and Continue buttons.

The most annoying thing is that none of the button choices do anything to actual remove the error. The error message cycles back and forth showing an error message first for drive XX:, then for drive YY:, back and forth, over and over, at least 16 times.

Yes, that’s right — 16 times!!

That’s when I decided to do something about it.

But before I destroyed it, I had to find out more about it.

The qttask.exe program is a simple program that lets Apple’s QuickTime software (often bundled with iTunes) show up in the Windows taskbar. To me, the taskbar only needs to store the system’s volume control and be a place where I get a visual indication when I get mail. To hëll with everything else!

You’ll find solutions all over the ‘net that tell you (1) which registry entry to edit to stop qttask; (2) what option in the Control Panel to set; (3) to deselect the checkbox within the QuickTime software that says to display the control in the toolbar; (4) to remove and reinstall. None of that advice really matters or works. You think simply deselecting the checkbox will actually stop it from running in stealth mode?! Ha! Sooner or later, just like that bad apple MSN Messenger (that uses Microsoft’s own questionable sticky tactics), qttask will also eventually pop back.

The solution: Use the Task Manager to end the qttask process. Rename the qttask.exe file in your QuickTime directory to something else; you can even delete it as it is not used to play or view any QuickTime-associated data. Reboot. Simple!

64 Responses to “Fixing the Qttask.exe “No Disk” Error”

  1. "O"

    My problem “Qttask” started 2 restarts ago (about 10 minutes) I searched “Qttask computer bug” online and this site/posting came up first on list. I re-named Qttask to something els and BAMMO!! FIXED!:-) Thanks RDL!! I hope this annoying bugs stays away Forever. :-)peace

    Reply
  2. Rich

    Thanks for solving the “quicktime.exe – no disk” problem. I renamed the qttask file – and also copied the quicktime.qts file from windowssystem32 also into the Quicktime directory. Quicktime now boots without the error message. The problem came about after installing the new AOL 9 SE software – which puts the new Quicktime software in place as part of the upgrade -complete with the problem. Thanks, RDL!

    Reply
  3. Chris

    Clearing the recent file mmenu worked for me. Thanks for the tip, Upham. You don’t have to rename the qttask. When I turn it off in the preferences it goes away in the task manager itself.

    Reply
  4. Pat

    Hi Rich, I’m a bit of a moron on this stuff so would you please give me the actual steps to rename the qttask.exe file in the QuickTime directory including the bit about the Task Manager? Thanks

    Reply
  5. David

    Do you know how to get rid of this MpfTray.exe warnihg that keeps popping up every time i log on to my computer. If you could help that would be great!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply
  6. Kevin

    don’t know if this will help, or if it’s been posted as I am too tired to read all these from trying to figure this out for myself and only partially reading your input, but, before I started quicktime, I put a disk in my flash card reader. I then opened quicktime…no error. Then, I cleared the recent menu with the card still in the reader, closed quicktime, removed the disk, and relaunched quicktime……ta daa no error! hope this works for you all.

    Reply
  7. Doug

    Well, my fix to this annoyance was to simply acess the preferences in Quicktime for the taskbar and deselecting the launch to taskbar setting, this fully eliminated the anoying Windows Disk Error Message upon restart of Windows. The only problem I have now is, if I manualy open the program on the desktop it freezes up and forces me to go to the Windows task manager to stop the process, this only happens while logged into the internet via AOL. I suppose it wouldn’t matter what serviice your using to access the interent but I don’t know this for sure? In any case after many reboots the problem is completly gone…no more error.

    Reply
  8. RITA

    WHAT DOES AIM.EXE-NO DISK. THERE IS NO DISK IN THE DRIVE. PLEASE INSERT A DISK INTO DEVICE HARDDISK2DR12

    Reply
  9. Rusty Ranchero

    Thanks for the tip. I named the file to quicktimesucks.exe! The only reason it’s on my computer is because of iTunes and I never would have guessed it.

    -Rust.

    Reply
  10. Federook

    Hi. The problem is with QuickTime (qttask is that program), and it’s a very silly thing (you wonder how professional programmers do this…): the program keeps a list of recently viewed files. If there happens to be one that was from drive E, then you’re done, no more QuickTime ever.

    So, the *complete* solution is to uninstall and reinstall QuickTime, deleting any remaining QuickTime files in between the two things.

    Reply
  11. richard

    (1) The solution is not to uninstall and reinstall QuickTime, because you’ll run into the same problem again if you ever view QT movie files from a CD or DVD.

    (2) qttask.exe is only a utility bundled and used with QuickTime; it is not QuickTime itself. It can be safely removed. Removing the file is the *complete* solution.

    Reply
  12. Ilya

    Richard, I have the same error, but it was originated after I inserted sony flash card into my sony laptop… The title bar says attrib.exe – when I looked for it, I found it in CWINDOWSprefetch and in CWINDOWS32… Any Idea how to deal with tis one? Thanks a lot for any ideas!

    Reply
  13. Barb

    Hi Guys,

    I have a similar problem and Ive tried most solutions on the net, and they are not working for me.

    Recently, my external harddrive which is 1TB in capacity, stopped showing all my files on it when I plugged it in. It was as if my files of about over 400GB vanished, only a few files of 1KB or so were visible.

    When I checked the properties, it showed me the correct capacity I had on my external harddrive, only problem was I couldnt view my files. I recently took it to a hardware expert and he said its probably a hardware problem.

    What am driving at is that one of the folders on my harddrive is called “TV series”.

    The Title bar of the error message I see is called “TV series.exe -No Disk” and the error message is “There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into driveDeviceharddisk1DR33”

    I tried going to Disk Management to change the drive name and path, but its not possible and right now my external Harddrive has gone for repairs.

    Do I need to get it back b4 I can change the drive name? Im really confused as this error message is quite annoying.

    Please HELP!Somebody!

    Reply


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