USB flash floppy lost after mapping drive to computer

[jj]

I found this problem yesterday, and feel certain that it
must have been reported before, but I am unable to find
a reference to it in the Knowledge Base. I am hoping someone
can post a link to a fix by Microsoft.

I had a USB flash floppy drive previously installed and
it was assigned drive d: I needed to map drive D to a computer
for compatibility with an old Dos based program. I removed
the USB device and mapped D: to the remote computer.

However, when I plugged in the USB floppy, it would not appear
as a drive under my computer, although it appeared in the device
manager as working fine.

The work around I used was to disconnect the mapped drive D:, plug-in
the USB floppy, which then appeared,as before, working and as drive d:, and
change its drive letter to F:, using the computer management tools.

I was then able to map the remote computer to drive D ok. After this was
done, I can remove and plug back in the USB device and it comes up as drive
F:, so all is ok.

I tried the same exercise on another computer, with the same results.

This was done using XP both with and without SP1 installed.

Does someone have a link to a fix by Microsoft for this problem?

Thanks

jj

 

[Admiral Q]

What problem? You can't have 2 different hardware types mapped to the
"same" drive letter. The proper procedure was followed - you needed D: to
be a mapped "network" drive for a legacy program, D: was already mapped to a
"local" USB drive, you stepped on it when you mapped the network drive as
D:, without the USB being installed - had it been, you would have done as
you did in the end - change the drive letter of the USB drive to something
else, and mapped the network as D:

--
Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your service!
"Google is your Friend!"
www.google.com

***********************************************

 

[jj]

That is certainly not the correct answer. I first removed the
USB drive. At that point nothing was mapped to the d: drive. I then mapped
the network drive to D:, and this worked fine.

The problem came, when I re-insert the USB device, which should, map itself to
an un-used drive letter. It does not. It does not show in My Computer.

Apparently XP expects you to take a removable drive and change its drive
letter via the computer management tools, before you can use that drive letter
for another purpose. This is really insane. Surely Microsoft has a fix.

jj

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[george]

Apparently this is by design.
I've had the exact same experience.
Existing mapped network drives are not taken into account when it comes time
to assign drive leteers to usb devices.
I finally resorted (as a workaround) to map the network drive 'further down'
so as to leave the drive letter that will get assigned to the usb device,
unused.
So far this works for me, albeit not ideal.
:-(
george

 

[jj]

Thanks for your input George: I finally found a thread in a forum
where others were reporting the same problem.

I certainly don't think it is by design, but it is a bug in XP. Think
about the problems it can cause. You buy a USB floppy and plug it into the
system. It works fine. Sometime later you just happen to map a network
dirve to the drive letter. Time passes and you try to use your USB
floppy again -- it doesn't show -- WHY!!! problems problems problems.

Microsoft should fix this.

jj..

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[george]

They seem to be aware of it....
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297694

:-((

georege

 

[jj]

Ok; thanks George for that link. I felt certain this must
have been reported, but I could not locate it myself.

So Microsoft has known for at least 8 or 9 months about this, release
SP2, and still not fixed it. Oh well..

jj

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