Drive Letter Change

[Guest]

I would like all USB devices (Chips, Memory Sticks, USB Drives, USB Hard
drives etc.) to start at drive N, not F or E but N, is there a reg key to
make the first USB drive (like DOS lastdrive) at N. We have several hundred
machines and over 60 different USB memory stick makes / models so changing
the drive letter manually for every chip and every machine is a no go, Thanks
guys, this ones got me. We are currently using a c d e f g h i j for our
drives.

The devices work fine if you manually change the drive letter, but getting
sick of several hundred users asking me this same question. Robbie

 

[Guest]

Give this a try: Go to START--CONTROL PANEL--ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS--COMPUTER
MANAGEMENT--and under STORAGE listing, click on DISK MANAGEMENT. Then on the
next screen that shows all the drives you have on the computer, cursor down
to the one you want to change the drive letter on and RIGHT click on that
drive listing. Then on the next screen, click on CHANGE DRIVE LETTER and
PATH. Then click on the small down arrow in the small box on the right side
of the screen where your existing letter should be shown. You will have a
choice of any of the letters shown that you can change the drive to. If the
letter is not shown, then you cannot use it. Then click on O.K. and re-boot
the computer. You should notice that the drive you wanted changed will have
the new letter.

Hope that helps...
Redwagon.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I would like all USB devices (Chips, Memory Sticks, USB Drives, USB Hard
drives etc.) to start at drive N, not F or E but N, is there a reg key to
make the first USB drive (like DOS lastdrive) at N. We have several hundred
machines and over 60 different USB memory stick makes / models so changing
the drive letter manually for every chip and every machine is a no go, Thanks
guys, this ones got me. We are currently using a c d e f g h i j for our
drives.

The devices work fine if you manually change the drive letter, but getting
sick of several hundred users asking me this same question. Robbie

AFAIK, Windows has now provision for doing this. USB devices
will to this when connected:
- If they have never been connected before, they grab the first
available drive letter.
- If they have been connected before then they will use the last
used drive letter.

 

[Guest]

I'm not sure now what the gentleman wanted to accomplish, but based on
several advices from Microsoft and other web sites, one can change drive
letters after they (Drives) have been installed on a computer.
Check the following web site for information on changing drive letters:
http://www.dougknox.com/tips/xp_drive_letters.htm

Also check Microsoft's advice on this at Q307844. The only drive where the
letter cannot be changed is the root drive (i.e. C as far as I know.

In the past, I have had to install a new slave hard drive AFTER a couple of
DVD and CD-R drives had already been installed by removing the other
secondary drives from the system then installing the new slave hard drive (it
then picked up letter "D") then re-installed the two other drives which then
became drives "E" & "F".

I think the OP was looking to change the drive letters to "N" wasn't he ? If
any of the other drives already installed were lower in case than N, then he
should be able to change to a higher case letter.

Redwagon

 

[Guest]

Yes this would work, but we have several hundred machines (close to 700)
spread over 1200 Miles and over 60 Different kinds of memory sticks and usb
chips and usb drives, I'm unable to change every machine for every chip this
may take several months and alot of driving. Looking for a reg hack to push
out to all our machnies remotely to make them all "start" looking at drive N
for any new USB deivice inserted into the machine.

Thanks for the option.

 

[Guest]

The options you have given me work great, but how would you suggest I do this
to 960 Computers spread over a 600KM radius? Do this to every machine? And
again a week later when the users change the USB deive to the newest flavor?

I can't plug a chip, a voice recorder, a digital camera into every machine
(different brands and changing daily) and configure the machine individually
using the "change drive letter option" this would take too long.

I'm looking a a reg hack that would make Windows XP start looking at drive N
and up for any new device plugged into the computer. (like the old DOS
Lastdrive command)

I hope you can understand my problem now

Thanks for the effort

 

[Guest]

PS the bug in Windows is that a new device will indeed Grab the First
available drive letter, but if the user is connected to a Novell network
drive, the new device will grab F, which a is default novell drive, the
device is there, but hidden (F) until you change the drive letter. This is
why I need to start grabbing drive letter N, M, O, P etc. to stay away from
the Novell Drives.

I'm sure this works great if your connecting to a Windows 2003 server box.

 

[Guest]

I've been trying to fix this too, with no luck.

Issue:
Change the default order that Windows XP assigns drive letters to USB drives.
It is easy to fix on one computer, with one USB drive.
But the issue is how to change the default XP behavior for all the computers
in your network for any USB device that you may attach to get a drive letter
starting at, say N:.

Something close, but not there is if you use the same USB drive on all the
computers you can prepopulate the registry for it.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices]
"\\DosDevices\\G:"=hex:02,05,ff,3f,00,40,00,00,00,00,00,00

I got that from:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/itcs/software/xp/drive-letters-usbdrive.html

I've called Lexar and SanDisk, niether was helpful.
I am amazed that there aren't more network people having problems with this.