Drive letter oddity

[john]

I've seen a number of drive letter issues here and on the various
forums on Windows, but none, I think, that fit my problem. So I'm
afraid this is rather long ;-)

My PC is Win XP Home, with C: (root drive), D: (DVD-ROM) and E: (DVD
burner) installed "in the case", i.e. fixed.

I also keep data on three WD USB connected external hard drives, which
I plug in as and when required. Occasionally I also plug into a USB
port a 4-slot card reader.

Until yesterday, I could plug and unplug any of these, and, when
unplugged, the drive letters they had been assigned would be released
automatically for further use. For example, if I plugged in one drive,
it would be assigned as Drive F and, when unplugged, F would be
released so that if I plugged either in that drive or any other it
would still be drive F.

The first hint of trouble was shown in VCOM's PD Explorer, where it
showed drive F still existing after it had been removed, although
obviously it couldn't access it. OTOH Windows Explorer showed the
drive as having been removed so I assumed it was some glitch in PD
Explorer (but that had never given trouble before).

So the "re plugged" drive now showed as G, so a simple trip to Drive
Management would soon fix that! Er, No. F was no longer available in
Drive Manager, and Tweak UI showed the letter as "occupied" (i.e. no
question mark).

I then discovered that if I plugged any other drive in (including the
card reader) then, after removal, the first available drive letter had
incremented by one.

Thankfully, rebooting restored all available letters but why the
change in behaviour?

Just before I noticed this, I had done four things:

Installed the latest Windows updates;

Installed an upgrade to PC Tools "Spyware Doctor";

Disconnected an ADSL modem from its USB port;

Attached a Linksys router to the Ethernet port and configured it
(works perfectly - no network drives used).

So, not a total disaster (just inconvenient to have to reboot), but
what has happened? Can anyone help with this?


Kind regards

 

[Mickey Mouse]

You don't mention anything about 'EJECTING'
It's not good practice to just plug or more to the point unplug external
drives, flash cards etc.
When you plug them in, Windows mounts them and assigns a drive letter.
BEFORE unplugging, you need to EJECT the device hitting the right mouse
button and selecting EJECT. The device would then be ok to unplug.
Sorry if you already now this.

Mickey

 

[john]

You don't mention anything about 'EJECTING'
It's not good practice to just plug or more to the point unplug external
drives, flash cards etc.
When you plug them in, Windows mounts them and assigns a drive letter.
BEFORE unplugging, you need to EJECT the device hitting the right mouse
button and selecting EJECT. The device would then be ok to unplug.
Sorry if you already now this.

Already do this: using the "safely remove hardware" facility. In fact
it makes not a jot of difference to what's happening.

However I did notice something else. After rebooting, I plugged in an
external drive and it set itself as G (although the first available
letter was F). So I went to disc manager and changed it to F. Then I
found that I could see the drive as F *and* G and it didn't matter
which drive letter I used to access it.


Regards

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Until yesterday, I could plug and unplug any of these, and, when
unplugged, the drive letters they had been assigned would be released
automatically for further use. For example, if I plugged in one drive,
it would be assigned as Drive F and, when unplugged, F would be
released so that if I plugged either in that drive or any other it
would still be drive F.

Answer from archive...

Maybe a letter cleanup helps.

Create a system restore point first...

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 this
fixes the problem...


Greetings from Germany

Uwe