Rhino Asks for a USB drive, and halts until I cancel it

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

Full disclosure. I made this machine a Dual-boot with Win 11 and Linux Mint. However, they are on separate m.2 drives, accessed through GRUB.

The machine was working fine whichever OS I was using. Eventually, I tried so set up a Kensington Keyboard capable USB dongle or Bluetooth. The intention was to use the dongle for LM, and Bluetooth for Win11. Anyway, after much diddling around, including trying the dongle on Windows, I’ve screwed something up with Windows 11 which seems to only show up in Rhino.

When I start Rhino, and select a recent file, I get the window asking for the D: drive USB, and the command line is as shown in the pic. Rhino is pretty much locked until I hit cancel on the D drive window, which then frees it up. I did look in Rhino “File” paths and “Folders” in settings and there is no reference to D drive. The machine only has C and F drives. This does not happen with any other program.

I also have two errors in the USB controller of Device manager. I wonder if these are related to the Rhino problem?

Rhino_Error
Rhino_Error516×215 12 KB

image
image826×237 14.1 KB

2

Hi. It is possible that one of the components of the file (e.g. an image, texture or block contained in the file) that you are trying to open in Rhino via ‘recent files’ in the menu had to be saved beforehand or stored on a drive connected via a USB port. Since you only have two drives labelled ‘C’ and “F” in your system, when you connect a USB flash drive or external drive via USB, Windows automatically assigns it the letter ‘D’ and searches for the Rhino file there.

3

Good suggestion. I did import a pic from a usb drive for that model. However, when I plug in that USB drive it comes in as H. I then double-clicked a different Rhino file to open Rhino that way, and still got the drive D window, but I don’t get the command line (UpdatePrompt….) line. This also only happens on initial start up. Opening a Rhino file after does not bring up the window. Also, the Device manager USB controller errors seem to have resolved themselves.

4

OK. If Windows assigns a different letter to the USB drive, you can change it to ‘D’ in Disk Management. Right-click the “Start” button, select ‘Disk Management’, and then right-click the USB drive to change its letter.

5

Oh, and in future, you can save images imported from external media to a Rhino file along with the file itself by selecting the ‘Save textures’ option when saving the file. Rhino will then save the textures in the scene file, and you can open it no matter where you move such files.

6

I’m thinking the USB drive I used is not the problem. I realized I copied the image to my desktop, and inserted it into Rhino from there. I can’t understand why it calls for a disk in drive D? Again, no other software is doing this. Here is the Disk management view.

image
image962×1066 193 KB

7

It’s simple: when you imported the file into Rhino, the USB stick was assigned the letter ‘D’ and Rhino remembered that file path. Why does Windows now assign the letter ‘H’ to it? I’ve had this problem myself. In the HP Z6 computer I use, I have a bay with four removable M.2 drives that I use to transfer project data. Often, when I insert the same drive into the same slot, Windows assigns it a different letter than before I removed it. I think this may be because the system takes into account the letter of the last fixed drive (although in my case even the internal drives are installed as removable). Only Microsoft knows for sure :slight_smile: Looking at your drives in the manager, after removing drive ‘H’, change the letters of drives 2 and 3 to, for example, ‘H’ and “I” and check if, after reinserting the USB drive, the system assigns it the letter ‘D’. From what I can see, drives 2 and 3 are permanently installed and may refer to an SD card reader, hub or other removable storage device.

8

One more question: did you install Rhino from a USB drive? If so, it may be looking for one of its components or plug-ins on that drive.

9

I’m not sure why. The USB drive was plugged in, but the image I used was on the desktop.

The results of Drive manager is confounding.

Disk 0 is my m.2 2TB Windows drive. Divided into Windows partition, and a Data partition.

Disk 1 is my m.2 2TB Linux Mint drive. There are no other removable drives other than the 2GB Nano I plugged in for this test. I wonder if the Linux Drive might be reading as D & E? I believe I partitioned it into a Linux OS ext4 format, (that I’m told Windows doesn’t see) and the rest is an NTFS partition.

Rhino was installed on this machine in March, I’m 99% sure it was from a McNeel download.

10

Create a simple Rhino file with, say, just one line in it and which causes Rhino to demand drive D:, post the file here so that it can be tested on another system to see if the request is generic or specific to your system.

11

The demand for Drive D happens on startup before any file is loaded. And what is even more weird I now see, is that the delete key does not work until I cancel the drive request! It starts working normally after I cancel. Anyway, here’s file and my sys info.

D_Error_Test.3dm (40.5 KB)

Rhino 8 SR26 2025-12-15 (Rhino 8, 8.26.25349.19001, Git hash:master @ c6182b1b71af690bf339ed38f9ccfc2fec2e46c3)
License type: Commercial, build 2025-12-15
License details: Cloud Zoo

Windows 11 (10.0.26100 SR0.0) or greater (Physical RAM: 62GB)
.NET 8.0.14

Computer platform: DESKTOP

Standard graphics configuration.
Primary display and OpenGL: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (NVidia) Memory: 8GB, Driver date: 8-14-2024 (M-D-Y). OpenGL Ver: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 560.94

Accelerated graphics device with 4 adapter port(s)

  • Secondary monitor attached to adapter port #0
  • Windows Main Display attached to adapter port #1

Secondary graphics devices.
AMD Radeon™ Graphics (AMD) Memory: 2GB, Driver date: 2-25-2025 (M-D-Y).

Accelerated graphics device with 5 adapter port(s)

  • There are no monitors attached to this device!

OpenGL Settings
Safe mode: Off
Use accelerated hardware modes: On
GPU Tessellation is: On
Redraw scene when viewports are exposed: On
Graphics level being used: OpenGL 4.6 (primary GPU’s maximum)

Anti-alias mode: 4x
Mip Map Filtering: Linear
Anisotropic Filtering Mode: High

Vendor Name: NVIDIA Corporation
Render version: 4.6
Shading Language: 4.60 NVIDIA
Driver Date: 8-14-2024
Driver Version: 32.0.15.6094
Maximum Texture size: 32768 x 32768
Z-Buffer depth: 24 bits
Maximum Viewport size: 32768 x 32768
Total Video Memory: 8188 MB

Rhino plugins that do not ship with Rhino

Rhino plugins that ship with Rhino
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Commands.rhp “Commands” 8.26.25349.19001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\rdk.rhp “Renderer Development Kit”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoRenderCycles.rhp “Rhino Render” 8.26.25349.19001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\rdk_etoui.rhp “RDK_EtoUI” 8.26.25349.19001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\NamedSnapshots.rhp “Snapshots”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\MeshCommands.rhp “MeshCommands” 8.26.25349.19001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoCycles.rhp “RhinoCycles” 8.26.25349.19001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Toolbars\Toolbars.rhp “Toolbars” 8.26.25349.19001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\3dxrhino.rhp “3Dconnexion 3D Mouse”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Displacement.rhp “Displacement”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\SectionTools.rhp “SectionTools”

12

Have you attempted a repair on Rhino?

13

I have not. What exactly does it do? Will it affect toolbars and customizations?

14

Nope, none of that. Just tries to fix any basic stuff Rhino needs to run that might have gotten corrupted.

15

How is this repair command run? A search just brings up things like “Meshrepair”.

16

In Windows, under “Add or Remove Programs,” everything has the option to “Repair” or “uninstall”…

17

Thanks for the “Repair” suggestion. No go I’m afraid. So I’m guessing the next Rhino update would do the same thing the repair did and would not be a fix. Really odd that this is only experienced starting Rhino.

18

I’m on Win 24H2 and holding off on 25H2, but maybe I should update?

19

I doubt that has anything to do with it.

20

I guess I’ll just have to live with this unless someone from McNeel has an answer.