CD drive letter change reverts

[Pat]

When I change my 2 CD drive letters in XPsp2 (Hard drives C: D: E from F: and G: to V: and W: it's
not permanent. When I restart they are changed back to F: and G:
Has anyone solved this problem or know of a solution?

 

[Pat]

Adding to my own post:
After about a mixture of about 30 restarts and cold starts, it seems that sometimes they revert
sometimes they don't.
I can't see a pattern. Googling only brought me a few similar problems with no solutions.
My reason for not accepting XP's choice of the next letters in sequence to my hard drive partitions
is that those CD letters get shifted up when I connect a music handheld or pen-drive.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

When I change my 2 CD drive letters in XPsp2 (Hard drives C: D: E from F: and G: to V: and W: it's
not permanent. When I restart they are changed back to F: and G:
Has anyone solved this problem or know of a solution?

Maybe your XP needs a rigorous drive and mount point
cleanup:

Create a system restore point first...

To make the device manager show non present devices, we
need the environment variable DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES
set to "1".
The easiest way is to start the device manager using a
command script. Put the following two lines into Notepad
and save as DevMgmtX.cmd

set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
devmgmt.msc

Start the saved DevMgmtX.cmd, the device manager comes up.
Select 'View' -> 'Show hidden devices'.
Now delete all non present stuff (translucent icons)
under 'drives' and 'storage volumes'.

Then open Regedit and go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2
Delete or rename the whole MountPoints2 hive.

Then go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Delete or rename the whole MountedDevices hive.

Reboot and pray

Then Windows will reassingn all letters and maybe they
become as persistent as they should be...


Greetings from Germany

Uwe

 

[Pat]

Thanks, Uwe Sieber

I tried your suggestion. It did not work but it made me look at my CD installation.

If I uninstall all CD drives - nonpresent and present - in device manager and then restart I see the
installation message and my two drives appear in device manager (unhidden, present & nonpresent
view.)

If I then restart again, I see the installing message again and another two drive icons appear - now
I have two pairs of drive icons - one pair is translucent. And however I go about renaming one or
both pairs they still revert to the next two letters after my hard drives.

I have no idea as to why I get this double install. Some times they survives two or three restarts
but eventually they always revert.

Could it be DOS or my motherboard that is insisting on this renaming?

And why a double installation but not three or more?

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Maybe it's a hardware problem with your CD drives. You could
try to change their master/slave setting. Or attach them
to a PCI controller card like a good old Promise Ultra-33
or Ultra-66 which you can get cheap at eBay because of their
128GB limit...

No more ideas...

BTW: There is another tread here discussing the same problem
("Force Drive Letters", started on 13th Feb.).


Greetings from Germany

Uwe