USB Drive Letter Mapping - Conflict with network drive letter

[John Phillip]

A USB memory device fails to obtain a drive letter
mapping after first usage.

Drive Letters: A = Floppy,
C = (only) local hard drive,
D = optical drive,
F = LAN Drive (mapping),
N, O, X, Y, Z = LAN Drives (mappings)
Windows XP Professional, Compaq Evo (all locked down by
Corporate support).

When I plug in a USB Lexar JumpDrive (64MB) it will take
the drive letter E. When I plug in a USB Kingston (256MB)
memory stick it will take the drive letter F if plugged
in prior to login and mapping of the F LAN drive.

(Both the USB: Lexar and Kingston, were plugged in to the
machine for the first usage (of the devices on this
machine) prior to login.)

If I plug in the Kingston USB device after login and
mapping to the F drive it will not be assigned a drive
letter (regardless of the availability of drive letter E.)

I can see the USB support for the USB Kingston device but
there is no drive letter mapping unless it is plugged in
prior the the F drive mapping.

Why does the USB device (Kingston) only work when the F
drive letter is available? Why does it not choose any
open drive letter? How can I assign an available drive
letter to a USB memory device?

Thanks.

 

[Guest]

I have this same problem. Windows XP automatically assigns USB memory devices to F: You are lucky that some times it works for you. We have F: alredy mapped to a network drive and have problems also. I go into the disk manager and change the drive letter of the USB key to an arbitrary letter like X or something. The USB key will then be mapped to X: upon restart and all will be well. Each different USB key may need this tretment, I am currently looking for a way around this automatic mapping to F: Hope some of this helps.

 

[CG3]

There is a registry modification that will solve this. However, it
re-opens a hole that has been in all the OS's since NT. The hole was
fixed way back in SP5 for NT. If you want me to post the mod, I will.
BUT, I will NOT be responsible for any security issues that arise from
it.

Microsoft will not fix this error until Vista/Longhorn, even with some
major players/partners asking them to fix it.