Flash Drive Letter Assignment

[Fester Bestertester]

WinXP SP2:

When I plug a flash drive into a usb port, an icon appears in the system
tray indicating that the drive is recognized and ready to use, but the
OS is not automatically assigning a drive letter to the device and I
cannot browse to it.

I do have several network drives mapping automatically when I start the
machine, and I'm wondering if this is what's causing the conflict.

Can someone point me to the workaround on this? (MSKB?)

 

[LVTravel]

After the USB drive is "configured" by XP, right click on My
Computer then left click on Manage then Disk Management.
When the window opens, look in the lower right corner of the
window for your flash drive (you may need to scroll down the
list. Once found, right click on the left part of the area
(where it describes the drive as Disk X) and then click on
Change drive letter and paths. You can the assign a unused
drive letter. Personally I map my network drives and CD
drives to fairly high letters to allow for the insertion of
USB products to keep from having this problem.

Also, some computers have the maximum drive letters set in
the registry to lower than Z: drive. To check this,
download and install Tweak-UI from
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
(scroll down the right side to the NON-Itanium version and
get it). Once installed start the program and click on the
+ by My Computer in the list. Then click on Drives and make
sure there is a check mark on each drive letter. Any that
are not checked will not be visible in Windows Explorer.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

WinXP SP2:

When I plug a flash drive into a usb port, an icon appears in the system
tray indicating that the drive is recognized and ready to use, but the
OS is not automatically assigning a drive letter to the device and I
cannot browse to it.

I do have several network drives mapping automatically when I start the
machine, and I'm wondering if this is what's causing the conflict.

Can someone point me to the workaround on this? (MSKB?)

Assingning a different drive letter solves it for this drive
but each new you have the problem again. Read more here:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html


Uwe