Card Reader: How to Remove Drive Letters?

[Pieter Coucke]

Hi,

My new laptop has a 10-in-1 Card Reader. In Windows XP it shows me 4
drive-letters for it: F:, G:, H: and I:, even when there is no card in it.

To avoid it, I shuld have disabled the card reader in the BIOS before
isntalling Windows XP. Offcourse I don't want to redo my installation (took
me 2 days!), and I guess there must be another way to remove those drive
letters when there isn't a card in it.

Any idea how to do this? Somewhere in the registry?

Thanks a lot in advance,

Pieter

 

[Uwe Sieber]

My new laptop has a 10-in-1 Card Reader. In Windows XP it shows me 4
drive-letters for it: F:, G:, H: and I:, even when there is no card in it.

How to change drive letter assignments in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307844

If you have an NTFS formatted drive then I suggest to
create a folder 'CardReader' there, create a subfolder
in it for each slot of the card reader. Then you can
remove the letters and mount the slots to the created
folders.


Greetings from Germany

Uwe

 

[Pieter Coucke]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer.

I don't really want to change the drive letters, but I want them only to be
shown when there is actually a card in it, not when they are empty (like
with an USB-stick that is plugged in or out).

The mounting-solution seems nice to me, and I do have NTFS. But the "mount
in the following empty ntfs folder"-option is disabled. Is there a reason
for which it is disabled? And hwo can I enable this option?

Pieter

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Thanks for the answer.

I don't really want to change the drive letters, but I want them only to be
shown when there is actually a card in it, not when they are empty (like
with an USB-stick that is plugged in or out).

There is on automatic mechanism for that.

The mounting-solution seems nice to me, and I do have NTFS. But the "mount
in the following empty ntfs folder"-option is disabled. Is there a reason
for which it is disabled? And hwo can I enable this option?

Yes, that's a bit strange. 'Change' is suitable to change
from one letter to anohter. Click 'Remove' first, then 'Add'.



Greetings from Germany

Uwe

 

[Sean Fitzmaurice]

It's easier than messing with the registry....

1. Right click on the may computer icon and go to properties
2. click on hardware tab at the top, then select device manager
3. find the unwanted drives in the list of devices, right click on each one
individually and select disable

re-boot the machine and your laughin'

Seán

 

[Pieter Coucke]

The drives disappear indeed, but when I put a card in it, will they appear
automaticly?

 

[Dave B]

No they will not

The drives disappear indeed, but when I put a card in it, will they appear
automaticly?

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Hi,

My new laptop has a 10-in-1 Card Reader. In Windows XP it shows me 4
drive-letters for it: F:, G:, H: and I:, even when there is no card in it.

To avoid it, I shuld have disabled the card reader in the BIOS before
isntalling Windows XP. Offcourse I don't want to redo my installation (took
me 2 days!), and I guess there must be another way to remove those drive
letters when there isn't a card in it.

Any idea how to do this? Somewhere in the registry?

Thanks a lot in advance,

Pieter

In general, card reader "appear" to be "hot-swapable" media device. This
seems to make that the reader slots themselves are the drives and when the
media card can be inserted/removed without powering down the PC. This is very
similar to the floppy drive usage.

 

[Ron Sommer]

In general, card reader "appear" to be "hot-swapable" media device. This
seems to make that the reader slots themselves are the drives and when the
media card can be inserted/removed without powering down the PC. This is
very
similar to the floppy drive usage.

Card readers are optimized for quick removal.
There is no write caching to improve drive performance.