Drives, Mappings all messed up after Hardware Install

[Guest]

I have a Compaq PC working fine for 3 years till I installed a USB driver
for a SanDisk reader. Here's what I had for drives before the installation

(X Drive -A mapped network drive for a remote PC subdirectory
(F Drive -A Maxtor USB drive

After the SanDisk installation, I went to "My Computer" and found

(F Drive was gone

(X drive disappeared under network drives replaced by the "G drive" under
network drives, and the G drive was formerly the F drive, the USB drive, if
one checks the properties.

I checked under "disk management", and confirmed that the "G Drive" was
actually the USB drive showing up as "G Drive" under the "network drive"
section of "My Computer, rather than as a local logical drive. For some
strange reason, it shows up under "Network Drives"

I did a work around as follows:

SUBST F: G:\
Mapped X again to the remote PC subdirectory again.

So I got it to work as before so all the programs depending on the above
work still work. The Norton's backup program backed up to the F drive and
still does. Got programs accessing data from drive X and stil does.

I tried "safely removing" hardware, the USB drive, but got a message to the
efffect "its in use".

So I'm trying to decide what's best:

1- Shut down the PC, disconnect the USB Maxtor drive, reboot, shut it down
again, and then hook it back up again??

I was afraid to do this since I have the PC working, and I've had bad
experiences playing around with USB stuff, where sometimes things just
disappear.

2 - I looked into the "Registry", and read somewhere that I can fix it by
editing the "Mountpoint2" item, deleting the "G drive" and maybe do this in
conjuction with one above, to get rid of the "Network Drive"

3- Or should I leave everything alone since it's working, and within a year,
replace this PC that I use for business, clean it up, and give it to my
daughter for computer games.

What's the best thing to do?? It's a mess, but it works, BUT "a mess"
always bothers me.

Frank

 

[Guest]

Sorry I can't be of much help - if you are still having problems you should
re-post your message so it will get renewed attention. If you are able to
make a complete system backup, then do that before 'experimenting' further,
since you are afraid of destroying the system. With the backup you could at
least get back what you had before. Also make several restore points before
making any major changes. If nothing seems to work and the system is messed
up then back up all critical data and format the hard drive and reinstall
Windows and applications.