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re: Question about 'Designate Your Own Drive Letters'
Tuesday, October 21, 2003 at 9:47 pm
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Rikki
(1 messages posted)
Windows XP and 2000 use MountMgr to manage drive letters. The weird thing about 2K/XP
is that, unlike Windows 98 or ME where hard drives are assigned letters first, Windows
XP and 2000 assign the next available drive letter to each device added, regardless
of type. For instance, when I two CD-ROMs added before newest Hard Drive , the CD-ROMs
had letters D: and E: while the new drive letters started at F:.
The good news is that drive letters can be manually changed using Disk Management
under the Administrative Tools, with some exceptions. For details, here's a Microsoft
Knowledgebase entry for this problem:
How to Assign a Drive Letter
To assign a drive letter to a drive, partition, or volume:
Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
NOTE: If you do not see Performance and Maintenance, go to step 3. Performance and
Maintenance is displayed in Control Panel only if you use Category view. If you use
Classic view, Performance and Maintenance does not appear.
Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then in the left
pane, click Disk Management.
Right-click the drive, partition, logical drive, or volume for which you want to
assign a drive letter, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Click Add.
Click Assign the following drive letter (if it is not already selected), either accept
the default drive letter or click the drive letter that you want to use, and then
click OK.
The drive letter is assigned to the drive, partition, or volume that you specified,
and is displayed in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management
tool.
How to Change a Drive Letter
To change an existing drive letter on a drive, partition, or volume:
Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then in the left
pane, click Disk Management.
Right-click the drive, partition, logical drive, or volume for which you want to
assign a drive letter, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Click Change.
Click Assign the following drive letter (if it is not already selected), click the
drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.
Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.
The drive letter of the drive, partition, or volume that you specified is changed,
and the new drive letter is displayed in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume
in the Disk Management tool.
How to Remove a Drive Letter
To remove an existing drive letter on a drive, partition, or volume:
Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then in the left
pane, click Disk Management.
Right-click the drive, partition, logical drive, or volume for which you want to
assign a drive letter, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Click Remove.
Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the removal.
The drive letter is removed from the drive, partition, or volume that you specified.
back to the top
Troubleshooting
When you attempt to change an existing drive letter, you receive the following error
message:
The volume volume_label drive_letter is currently in use.
If you continue, the new drive letter will be assigned; but you can still use the
old drive letter to access the volume until you restart your computer. The old drive
letter will not be available for assignment until you restart.
Warning: Changing the drive letter of a volume might cause programs to no longer
run.
This error message can occur if there are files in use on the drive, partition, or
volume. This includes files that are accessed by other people on the network. To
resolve this behavior, use one of the following methods:
Click No when you receive the error message. Quit all programs that are using the
files on the volume, and then change the drive letter (right-click the volume, click
Change Drive Letter and Paths, and then click Change).
Click Yes to proceed with the drive letter change.
When you attempt to remove an existing drive letter, you receive the following error
message:
The volume volume_label drive_letter is currently in use.
If you continue, the drive letter will be freed; however, it will still be available
for use until you restart your computer.
Warning: Changing the drive letter of a volume might cause programs to no longer
run.
This error message can occur if there are files in use on the drive, partition, or
volume. This includes files that are accessed by other people on the network. To
resolve this behavior, use one of the following methods:
Click No when you receive the error message. Quit all programs that are using the
files on the volume, and then remove the drive letter (right-click the volume, click
Change Drive Letter and Paths, and then click Remove).
Click Yes to remove the drive letter the next time you start your computer.
On Saturday, December 29, 2001 at 2:44 pm, P McDougall wrote:
>I have a question about Designate
>Your Own Drive Letters:
>
>I am Looking for a way to control Drive Letter assignments for USB devices, flash
>card readers inparticular. The problem is that the Drive Letter assignment for
the
>internal CD drive keeps changing depending on the number of "hot swappable" USB
devices.
> Then installed Software that reqires a CDR cannot find the CD.
>
>The CD drive is reserved to "E" but it gets bumped up anyway to "G" for example.
> If "E" is reserved shouldn't it always be the letter for the CD Drive?
>
>The Reserved Drive Letters box is disabled for the USB devices and I am continuing
>to investigate a way to change these as suggested in this article.
>
>Thank you for any help you can provide.
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 |  | re: Question about 'Designate Your Own Drive Letters' (Rikki: Tue, Oct 21, 2003, 9:47 pm) |
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