USB drive letter problem

4 Apr 2005 6:00 AM

Time Teamer

My mass storage devices are recognised in Device Manager, but they do not
get allocated a drive letter in My Computer or Explorer.

I have tried Googling for a fix, without having to do a reinstall or repair
of windows, but to no avail.

Will a PCI USB2.0 card sort this known WINDOWS XP problem.

4 Apr 2005 8:00 AM

Kev

"Time Teamer" <b**@yobtinternet.com> wrote in
news:d2ql5p$2l6$2@hercules.btinternet.com:

> My mass storage devices are recognised in Device Manager, but they do
> not get allocated a drive letter in My Computer or Explorer.

control panels -> computer management -> disk management

and assign the letter of your choice. since its removable maybe skip a few
after whatever the last one is.. probably your CDRW or DVDR

4 Apr 2005 10:42 AM

Fiev

is the drive definitely formatted?

fiev

Show quoteHide quote

"Time Teamer" <b**@yobtinternet.com> wrote in message
news:d2ql5p$2l6$2@hercules.btinternet.com...
> My mass storage devices are recognised in Device Manager, but they do not
> get allocated a drive letter in My Computer or Explorer.
>
> I have tried Googling for a fix, without having to do a reinstall or
> repair of windows, but to no avail.
>
> Will a PCI USB2.0 card sort this known WINDOWS XP problem.
>
>
>

4 Apr 2005 4:53 PM

Wayne Stallwood

Time Teamer wrote:

> My mass storage devices are recognised in Device Manager, but they do not
> get allocated a drive letter in My Computer or Explorer.
>
> I have tried Googling for a fix, without having to do a reinstall or
> repair of windows, but to no avail.
>
> Will a PCI USB2.0 card sort this known WINDOWS XP problem.

There is a known problem with Windows and drive letter assignment.

I have experienced it before under the following circumstances.

Internal drives of A: (floppy) C: (Hard drive) D: (DVD drive) E: (CDRW
drive) and a mapped network drive of F:

Or A: (floppy) C: (Hard drive) D: (DVD drive) and a mapped network drive of
E:

What happens is that when assigning the drive letter for the recently
inserted USB drive windows looks at the internal drives but ignores the
network drive. Thus the USB drive gets the same drive letter as the Network
drive (F: or E: in the above examples). Because the mass storage controller
gets loaded after the Network the USB drive is not available.

Most people that have been bitten by this have taken the good habit of
assigning only the drive letters nearer the end of the alphabet to network
drives, but it may be that you cannot do this without breaking document
paths etc now. So you should do what another poster has suggested and look
in The disk management section of computer management to force a different
drive letter to the USB disk. Sadly this may have to be done for every USB
drive device you plug in.

Maybe Microsoft will fix this some day ?

4 Apr 2005 6:18 PM

Time Teamer

Show quote Hide quote

"Wayne Stallwood" <myname@digimaticDOTplus.C0M> wrote in message
news:42516f97$0$27873$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net...
> Time Teamer wrote:
>
>> My mass storage devices are recognised in Device Manager, but they do not
>> get allocated a drive letter in My Computer or Explorer.
>>
>> I have tried Googling for a fix, without having to do a reinstall or
>> repair of windows, but to no avail.
>>
>> Will a PCI USB2.0 card sort this known WINDOWS XP problem.
>
> There is a known problem with Windows and drive letter assignment.
>
> I have experienced it before under the following circumstances.
>
> Internal drives of A: (floppy) C: (Hard drive) D: (DVD drive) E: (CDRW
> drive) and a mapped network drive of F:
>
> Or A: (floppy) C: (Hard drive) D: (DVD drive) and a mapped network drive
> of
> E:
>
> What happens is that when assigning the drive letter for the recently
> inserted USB drive windows looks at the internal drives but ignores the
> network drive. Thus the USB drive gets the same drive letter as the
> Network
> drive (F: or E: in the above examples). Because the mass storage
> controller
> gets loaded after the Network the USB drive is not available.
>
> Most people that have been bitten by this have taken the good habit of
> assigning only the drive letters nearer the end of the alphabet to network
> drives, but it may be that you cannot do this without breaking document
> paths etc now. So you should do what another poster has suggested and look
> in The disk management section of computer management to force a
> different
> drive letter to the USB disk. Sadly this may have to be done for every USB
> drive device you plug in.
>
> Maybe Microsoft will fix this some day ?

Thanks for all replies.

1. Kev, tried all drive letters after last letter E. No Go. After changing I
also do an Explore which for a very short period (milliseconds) shows the
file contents of the drive then the My Computer windows appears without the
drive.
2. Fiev, drive is definitely formatted. I have tried 2 x CF + a Memory
Stick.
3. Wayne, never had a Network drive setup. In short one day they worked the
next they did not. I did not install any new software or hardware between.

thanks all
DJ

4 Apr 2005 8:16 PM

Wayne Stallwood

Does anything appear in Disk management relating to the USB drive ?

Where is the USB drive appearing in the device manager ?

Also it may be worth checking in Event Viewer to see if any errors are
written in the system log as the USB drive is inserted.

Regards
Wayne

5 Apr 2005 5:18 AM

Time Teamer

"Wayne Stallwood" <myname@digimaticDOTplus.C0M> wrote in message
news:42519f34$0$42316$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
> Does anything appear in Disk management relating to the USB drive ?

yes as a non named Drive

> Where is the USB drive appearing in the device manager ?

in Disk Drives

> Also it may be worth checking in Event Viewer to see if any errors are
> written in the system log as the USB drive is inserted.

there is one DCOM error and according to MS its server related. Not sure
about this.

regs
dj