diff --git a/streaming/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/streaming/rdd/WriteAheadLogBackedBlockRDD.scala b/streaming/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/streaming/rdd/WriteAheadLogBackedBlockRDD.scala
index 844760ab61d2e..2c97c0afa260e 100644
--- a/streaming/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/streaming/rdd/WriteAheadLogBackedBlockRDD.scala
+++ b/streaming/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/streaming/rdd/WriteAheadLogBackedBlockRDD.scala
@@ -135,8 +135,11 @@ class WriteAheadLogBackedBlockRDD[T: ClassTag](
         // FileBasedWriteAheadLog will not create any file or directory at that path. Also,
         // this dummy directory should not already exist otherwise the WAL will try to recover
         // past events from the directory and throw errors.
+        // Specifically, the nonExistentDirectory will contain a colon in windows, this is invalid
+        // for hadoop. Remove the drive letter and colon, e.g. "D:" out of this path by default
         val nonExistentDirectory = new File(
-          System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir"), UUID.randomUUID().toString).getAbsolutePath
+          System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir"), 
+          UUID.randomUUID().toString).getAbsolutePath.replaceFirst("[a-zA-Z]:", "")
         writeAheadLog = WriteAheadLogUtils.createLogForReceiver(
           SparkEnv.get.conf, nonExistentDirectory, hadoopConf)
         dataRead = writeAheadLog.read(partition.walRecordHandle)