Blocked drive letter

[Andy]

i got a new pc with preinstalled xp prof. sp2. as usual there was only one
big partition on the hdd. as i wanted to divide the partition, i installed
partition magic 8.01. before running it, i copied some files from the
network and therefore i mapped a shared folder to drive letter z.
then i seemed to make a mistake. i forgot to disconnect the network drive
and ran partition magic.
after the work was done, the system restarted. when i logged in, it claimed
to have found some new drives and the system should be rebooted in order to
use them.
obedient as i am, i rebooted it again. when i logged in, an icon appeared in
the systray claiming that it could not reconnect to the network drive, i
mapped before as drive z.
i started the explorer and clicked on the drive and truly there was no
connection. no problem i thought, let's disconnect and reconnect again. but
to my surprise i got an error when i tried to disconnect, stating that it
just is not possible!?!?
i rebootet again and since then the mapped drive disappeared from the
ecplorer, BUT from time to time an unassigned local drive appears
(unformatted) - can't be seen in the drivemanager!!! - and what bothers me
most at the moment, drive letter z is blocked (even if the 'ghost-drive'
does not show up).
i allready installed tweakui. there the drive letter is shown as 'in use'.
unchecking, rebooting, checking... again did not help either.
i could not find the slightest hint, where xp saves drive assignments and
ran out of ideas. has anyone any idea what to do (except reinstalling xp)?
thanks in advance,
Andy

 

[3c273]

You might check under the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network\Z
If it was me, I'd just delete the Z key and reboot, but all of the
precautions about modifying the registry should be taken.
Louis

 

[Andy]

Sorry, but this registry key does not exist (when I read your hint, I
remembered, that I allready deleted it). So there must be another place,
where that info is stored. (

Andy