Missing Drive letter

[Guest]

Using Win XP Pro - bought Fantom 300gig external hard drive. USB at the time
was 1.0 (I think) and is still being used by keyboard/mouse.
All was well until I put all my info on to the new drive. I booted up the
other day and discovered I can not find the drive letter.
Bought a USB 2.0 PCI card (thought that was the prob) but still can't see
the drive letter.
Tried "change drive letter" in "Disk Management" but that is not an option
for that particular drive. The other drive "C" has the option but not the
external drive.
Also, I don't know if this is coincidental but windows started hanging
during shut down when the screen gets to the "Windows is shuting down" and I
have had to hold the "ON" button in until it shuts down. This seems to have
started as recently as the drive letter problem.
Any thoughts
Thank you
Luke

 

[Guest]

See the following article and let us know if the information was useful to you.

http://www.bixnet.com/eztruseezase.html#win2k

More info:
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article: 307079 - If you set up multiple hard disks
on a computer that runs Windows XP, and you do not format the hard disks or
assign drive letters to the hard disks, Disk Management may assign drive
letters to the hard disks. Depending on the number of unformatted that are on
the computer, Disk Management may assign all of the available drive letters
to the unformatted hard disks. If the number of unformatted hard disks
exceeds the number of available drive letters, Disk Management does not
assign drive letters to the unformatted hard drives

see this as well:

http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-34453-How-to-force-USB-HD-to-use-a-Specified-letter.html

 

[Guest]

rajkohli
I tried the solution at the following link but my option to change the drive
letter was grayed out and there were no other options.
http://www.bixnet.com/eztruseezase.html#win2k

By the way, I am using a wireless router on this pc just incase it matters.

I tried the solutions at
http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-34453-How-to-force-USB-HD-to-use-a-Specified-letter.html
and soon rememberd that I had been using an HP External CD Read/Writer a
while back. After I changed the drive letter from "G" to "L" for the
External CD Read/Writer, I plugged in the Mass Storage device to get no
results.

In Disk Management the Mass Storage Device is Unallocated Space and the only
two options it is giving are 1, Partition of which I tried an extended
partition of 500MB and was able to get a drive letter "Z" on it but in order
to use it it must be formaated.
Option 2, was to format the entire external drive. That's a last resort as
I have already used it and all my files are on it. If I could get my data off
then sure I would format but I shouldn't have to in the first place.

Let me say that I tried to boot in safe mode to remove drivers but all that
the PC does is, in a DOS screen, list a mess of drivers and then goes back to
the options to boot in safe mode, regular mode, and so on. I have tried some
of the other options in there only to get the same results. I simply cannot
boot in safe mode.

While I am waiting for your reply, and I hope someone does, I will remove
all devices but the physical drive "C" and try and get back to some kind of
normal. I will post if I have a discovery.
Thanks for the help,
Luke

 

[Guest]

Okay, I took out all PCI devices and now the PC will shut down by itself. I
still can't figure out why it won't start in safe mode. it still lists a
mess of driver extensions on a black screen and then goes back to the options
to boot in safe mode, regular mode, and so on as if I just hit the F8 key.
What's strange is that I removed the mass storage device and the newly
purchased USB 2.0 device and the device manager shows that the network device
is still there (1394 Net Adapter) and the properties for that adapter point
to location on Texas instuments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller.
I am not sure if that is supposed to be there so I uninstall it and it comes
back! I wouldn' bother with it but there is only a SMC EZ Card10/100 PCI
(SMC1211 Series) card on my system.
the other strange thing is that if I connect the mass storage external hard
drive to the USB, then a 2nd 1394 Net Adapter #2 is loaded under the first
1394 Net Adapter but it has an error and won't start. What the heck is that
about!?
Luke

 

[Guest]

Okay, I took out all PCI devices and now the PC will shut down by itself. I
still can't figure out why it won't start in safe mode. it still lists a
mess of driver extensions on a black screen and then goes back to the options
to boot in safe mode, regular mode, and so on as if I just hit the F8 key.
What's strange is that I removed the mass storage device and the newly
purchased USB 2.0 device and the device manager shows that the network device
is still there (1394 Net Adapter) and the properties for that adapter point
to location on Texas instuments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller.
I am not sure if that is supposed to be there so I uninstall it and it comes
back! I wouldn' bother with it but there is only a SMC EZ Card10/100 PCI
(SMC1211 Series) card on my system.
the other strange thing is that if I connect the mass storage external hard
drive to the USB, then a 2nd 1394 Net Adapter #2 is loaded under the first
1394 Net Adapter but it has an error and won't start. What the heck is that
about!?

Is there anyone in here that will reply please.!?
Thanks
Luke