Drive letters don't survive a reboot

[Vince C.]

Hi.

I've installed Windows 2000 Server under VirtualBox and I've added a virtual
disk, which appears as E: after the virtual CDROM drive, D: . But I'd like
the CDROM to be Z: and the primary slave disk to be D: .

When I reboot the virtual machine, the CDROM drive takes back D: and the
secondary slave disk, E: . I've found no way to have Windows store the
drive letters that *I* want.

Has anyone already had that problem? Is there a fix?

Thanks in advance for any hint/suggestion.

 

[Newbie Coder]

Vince,

Go into COMPUTER MANAGEMENT & FIX a drive letter then

 

[nesredep egrob]

Hi.

I've installed Windows 2000 Server under VirtualBox and I've added a virtual
disk, which appears as E: after the virtual CDROM drive, D: . But I'd like
the CDROM to be Z: and the primary slave disk to be D: .

When I reboot the virtual machine, the CDROM drive takes back D: and the
secondary slave disk, E: . I've found no way to have Windows store the
drive letters that *I* want.

Has anyone already had that problem? Is there a fix?

Thanks in advance for any hint/suggestion.

AS administrator start/settings/administrative tools/Computer Mangements/Disk
Management right click the CD and choose to change drive letter.
That is it
Borge in sunny Perth, Australia

 

[Vince C.]

AS administrator start/settings/administrative tools/Computer
Mangements/Disk Management right click the CD and choose to change drive
letter. That is it
Borge in sunny Perth, Australia

Go into COMPUTER MANAGEMENT & FIX a drive letter then

Thanks to both of you but it's what I had done (but not mentionned clearly)
in fact. Yet the drive letters I set don't survive a reboot.

 

[nesredep egrob]

Thanks to both of you but it's what I had done (but not mentionned clearly)
in fact. Yet the drive letters I set don't survive a reboot.

If your disk has dynamic facilities or if the disk has an operating system on it
you cannot expect a change of letter to survive a reboot.

I have never managed to change a disk from dynamic other than store all the info
on an external disk, partition and reformat and the restore the data.
good luck

Borge in sunny Perth, Australia

 

[Vince C.]

If your disk has dynamic facilities or if the disk has an operating system
on it you cannot expect a change of letter to survive a reboot.

No, it's not the system disk, just the CD-ROM and an additional, secondary
slave disk. System drive is always C: (I'd say hopefully). But the CDROM
and the slave disk are always D: and E: respectively whatever I do and the
drive letters I set the drives to in Computer mnagement / Disk management.

For now and for a while I'll cope with it but I do need to have my data
maintained on a separate disk. Disk C is for the system. I can then share
my virtual data disk amongst many virtual machines, be it for projects,
downloaded files aso.

 

[nesredep egrob]

No, it's not the system disk, just the CD-ROM and an additional, secondary
slave disk. System drive is always C: (I'd say hopefully). But the CDROM
and the slave disk are always D: and E: respectively whatever I do and the
drive letters I set the drives to in Computer mnagement / Disk management.

For now and for a while I'll cope with it but I do need to have my data
maintained on a separate disk. Disk C is for the system. I can then share
my virtual data disk amongst many virtual machines, be it for projects,
downloaded files aso.

I wonder if you have tried to just change the CD-Rom to Z and leave the disk
alone, just as a try - let me know this morning as I am seeing a friend more
knowledgeable that I just after lunch.

For your information, my stats are:
Win 2000, Pentium IV 3Ghz
1 Gb memory,ADSL
200+200 GB disks partitioned C:E;as 9.76GB 88.2GB,88.2GB
F: G: as 93.1,93.1 for data
200GB USB2 for Acronis Images (backups)
Borge Pedersen
Perth, Australia
mailto:[email protected]
remove SPAM and underlines for email

 

[Vince C.]

I wonder if you have tried to just change the CD-Rom to Z and leave the
disk alone, just as a try - let me know this morning as I am seeing a
friend more knowledgeable that I just after lunch.

Yes, I have. Once I just changed the CDROM drive letter alone, then
rebooted. It persisted only until I changed the secondary slave to D.
Afterwards I could even restore the slave letter drive to its initial
value, no way: the (virtual) CDROM kept its drive letter upon reboot. In
fact, after I made that change, both drives got back to the defaults each
time I rebooted.

Now I have even removed the secondary slave and yet the CDROM gets its
letter D back at each reboot whatever I set it to.

My virtual machine specs are:
Core2 Duo (T5600) @ 1.83GHz
384MB RAM
Master HD (VBox HardDisk): 10 GB
Chipset: 82xxx

 

[nesredep egrob]

Yes, I have. Once I just changed the CDROM drive letter alone, then
rebooted. It persisted only until I changed the secondary slave to D.
Afterwards I could even restore the slave letter drive to its initial
value, no way: the (virtual) CDROM kept its drive letter upon reboot. In
fact, after I made that change, both drives got back to the defaults each
time I rebooted.

Now I have even removed the secondary slave and yet the CDROM gets its
letter D back at each reboot whatever I set it to.

OK - so you have established that the secondary has nothing to do with it - when
you close down, do you see a pause where the computer tell you it is saving your
settings?]
If not I should go back to the backup that you have on some external drive
somewhere in your office - maybe even the very first one, like the one I call
'skeleton'

For your information, my stats are:
Win 2000, Pentium IV 3Ghz
1 Gb memory,ADSL
200+200 GB disks partitioned C:E;as 9.76GB 88.2GB,88.2GB
F: G: as 93.1,93.1 for data
200GB USB2 for Acronis Images (backups)
Borge Pedersen
Perth, Australia
mailto:[email protected]
remove SPAM and underlines for email

 

[Vince C.]

OK - so you have established that the secondary has nothing to do with it
- when you close down, do you see a pause where the computer tell you it
is saving your settings?]

The first time I changed it... I don't know. But now it does prompt
the "Saving your personnal settings" or something like that. It doesn't
stay very long however.

If not I should go back to the backup that you have on some external drive
somewhere in your office - maybe even the very first one, like the one I
call 'skeleton'

Erm... I have no backup since it did that trick to me a few hours after I
had finished installing W2K. In fact I was finalizing the installation
(i.e. apply fixes, check security on folders, fix the everyone/full control
on sensible folders, configure my desktop and explorer, install and
configure my favorite applications and tools, configure Apache, configure
PHP, configure my IDE, download and install add-ons, stuff like that, which
invariably take hours or days the very first time...) And after that I
changed the drive letters (just forgot to do it in the first place ). So
I have no backup. Yet...

Vince C.

 

[nesredep egrob]

OK - so you have established that the secondary has nothing to do with it
- when you close down, do you see a pause where the computer tell you it
is saving your settings?]

The first time I changed it... I don't know. But now it does prompt
the "Saving your personnal settings" or something like that. It doesn't
stay very long however.

If not I should go back to the backup that you have on some external drive
somewhere in your office - maybe even the very first one, like the one I
call 'skeleton'

Erm... I have no backup since it did that trick to me a few hours after I
had finished installing W2K. In fact I was finalizing the installation
(i.e. apply fixes, check security on folders, fix the everyone/full control
on sensible folders, configure my desktop and explorer, install and
configure my favorite applications and tools, configure Apache, configure
PHP, configure my IDE, download and install add-ons, stuff like that, which
invariably take hours or days the very first time...) And after that I
changed the drive letters (just forgot to do it in the first place ). So
I have no backup. Yet...

Vince C.

With that much trouble, I should want to re-install the system again, complete
with SP4. Now do not connect to the internet under any circumstances until you
have SP4, a scanner like AVG and a firewall like Zone Alarm up and running. You
can of course download those while the computer is a mess.
There is one thing though - you do not seem to have had a display of the make -
up of your computer to let us know what you really have, like this:

For your information, my stats are:
Win 2000, Pentium IV 3Ghz
1 Gb memory, ADSL via Router DSL 504G
200+200 GB disks partitioned C:E;as 9.76GB 88.2GB,88.2GB
F: G: as 93.1,93.1 for data
320GB USB2 for Acronis Images (backups)
Borge Pedersen
Perth, Australia
mailto:[email protected]
remove SPAM and underlines for email

 

[Vince C.]

nesredep egrob <Long. -31,48.21 Lat. 115,47.40> wrote:

....

With that much trouble, I should want to re-install the system again,
complete with SP4.

Hmmm... I didn't say it but I've reinstalled W2K nearly half a dozen times -
not for that problem though - but I'm slightly starting to go fed up of
reinstalling... If you know what I mean. What buzzes me also is for every
single unsolvable problem you have to reinstall. Everything.

Now do not connect to the internet under any
circumstances until you have SP4, [...]

Erm... It's already a W2K with SP4 slip-streamed onto the installation CD...

There is one thing though - you do not seem to have
had a display of the make - up of your computer to let us know what you
really have, like this:

....

Sure, I have, two posts ago (July 10th, 19:02):

My virtual machine specs are:
Core2 Duo (T5600) @ 1.83GHz [with VM extensions (VT)]
384MB RAM
Master HD (VBox HardDisk): 10 GB
Chipset: 82xxx

Added, if I was not clear in my original post: this (W2K/SP4) is a virtual
machine that runs under VirtualBox 1.4 on a Gentoo Linux 64-bit laptop. The
guest (W2K/SP4) machine see the host processor as if it were running
directly on it. Hence I get exactly the same as if I had installed W2K on a
Core2 Duo w/ VMX hardware. But that's only for the CPU. All other resources
(i.e. I/O) are virtual resources.

Vince C.