New Drive Letter for DVD R/W drive does not "stick"

[Guest]

I have a new installation of XP Pro on a new computer based on the Gigabyte
GA-P35-DS3R motherboard running mirrored SATA HDD drives in RAID1 from the
native Intel RAID controller. Two IDE optical drives, configured as Master
and Slave on the single IDE controller available. I have successfully
changed the drive letter of the master drive, but the slave drive reverts
back to G: (the first available letter after HDD assignments) on reboot. I
have replaced the drive but still happens.

I am pulling my hair out trying to figure out why this one device will not
hold a new drive letter after reboot! Any ideas? Thanx

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have a new installation of XP Pro on a new computer based on the Gigabyte
GA-P35-DS3R motherboard running mirrored SATA HDD drives in RAID1 from the
native Intel RAID controller. Two IDE optical drives, configured as
Master
and Slave on the single IDE controller available. I have successfully
changed the drive letter of the master drive, but the slave drive reverts
back to G: (the first available letter after HDD assignments) on reboot.
I
have replaced the drive but still happens.

I am pulling my hair out trying to figure out why this one device will not
hold a new drive letter after reboot! Any ideas? Thanx

This could happen if you have insufficient access rights
to this registry key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

You could try and change your access rights or else you could
manually rename the value \DosDevices\G: to \DosDevices\W:
(for example), followed by a reboot.

 

[M.I.5¾]

I have a new installation of XP Pro on a new computer based on the Gigabyte
GA-P35-DS3R motherboard running mirrored SATA HDD drives in RAID1 from the
native Intel RAID controller. Two IDE optical drives, configured as
Master
and Slave on the single IDE controller available. I have successfully
changed the drive letter of the master drive, but the slave drive reverts
back to G: (the first available letter after HDD assignments) on reboot.
I
have replaced the drive but still happens.

I am pulling my hair out trying to figure out why this one device will not
hold a new drive letter after reboot! Any ideas? Thanx

Have you by any chance got Zonealarm installed? A couple of past versions
of Zonealarm cause this strange behaviour.

 

[Guest]

This could happen if you have insufficient access rights
to this registry key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

You could try and change your access rights or else you could
manually rename the value \DosDevices\G: to \DosDevices\W:
(for example), followed by a reboot.

Thanx for your reply, Pegasus. Unfortunately, this has not helped yet. I
have full administrator rights on the machine, and drive letter changes to
any other device work fine and stay changed. I have tried to manually change
the reg key, but it also does not stick. I have tried to remove the devices
from device manager and let them be re-discovered, but the results are the
same.

One oddity I DID find, however, is that my registry has both a
MountedDevices AND a MountedDevice1 entry. The drive letter is reverting in
the MountedDevices entry, but not in the MountedDevice1. Don't know if this
might give you or anyone else a clue . . . I'm still playing with it. May
try to delete MountedDevice1 all together.

 

[Guest]

Have you by any chance got Zonealarm installed? A couple of past versions
of Zonealarm cause this strange behaviour.

Interesting . . . I do have ZA Internet Security Suite installed (current
release level). I guess I'll try disabling that and see what happens. Thanx
for the suggestion.

 

[Guest]

Have you by any chance got Zonealarm installed? A couple of past versions
of Zonealarm cause this strange behaviour.

No joy. I shut down ZA and even stopped it from starting. Changed the
drive letter again (showed new drive letter in MountedDevices), then removed
the device from Device Manager and let a re-scan add it back. It was added
back with the new drive letter. This looked promising, BUT . . . Rebooted
machine and it is right back to G:! $%^)(*%!

Any more ideas? I suspect the \??\Volume key for the specific device may
contain the last assigned drive letter, but I have not been able to decode
the entry enough to determine that. I can easily see which one applies to
this device from the ASCII display, but can't tell if anything else there
contains a drive letter.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Thanx for your reply, Pegasus. Unfortunately, this has not helped yet. I
have full administrator rights on the machine, and drive letter changes to
any other device work fine and stay changed. I have tried to manually
change
the reg key, but it also does not stick. I have tried to remove the
devices
from device manager and let them be re-discovered, but the results are the
same.

One oddity I DID find, however, is that my registry has both a
MountedDevices AND a MountedDevice1 entry. The drive letter is reverting
in
the MountedDevices entry, but not in the MountedDevice1. Don't know if
this
might give you or anyone else a clue . . . I'm still playing with it.
May
try to delete MountedDevice1 all together.

I suspect that there is some agent on your machine that mucks
around with your drive letter assignments. Since you say that
it is not ZA, it must be something else. I would do this to isolate it:
1. Reboot in Safe Mode.
2. Change the drive letter assignment.
3. Reboot into Safe Mode. Does the assignment stick?
4. If yes, run msconfig.exe and disable all tasks under the
Startup tab.
5. Reboot into Normal Mode. Does the assignment stick?
6. If yes, enable the various tasks selectively until you find
the culprit.

You should disconnect your machine from the Internet while
your virus & firewall protection is disabled.

 

[Guest]

I suspect that there is some agent on your machine that mucks
around with your drive letter assignments. Since you say that
it is not ZA, it must be something else. I would do this to isolate it:
1. Reboot in Safe Mode.
2. Change the drive letter assignment.
3. Reboot into Safe Mode. Does the assignment stick?
4. If yes, run msconfig.exe and disable all tasks under the
Startup tab.
5. Reboot into Normal Mode. Does the assignment stick?
6. If yes, enable the various tasks selectively until you find
the culprit.

You should disconnect your machine from the Internet while
your virus & firewall protection is disabled.

Once again, thank you for your response and suggestions. Unfortunately,
there is still no joy. I had already tried disabling all items in the
MSconfig startup tab, and it made no difference (the drive letter still did
not stick). I had not tried Safe Mode, so that suggestion was helpful and
did produce new information.

When I boot into safe mode, the drive letter that I had previously changed
to N: remained as N:, there was no need to change it again in Safe Mode.
This was true if I started Safe Mode both with and without networking
support. Unfortunately, as soon as I rebooted in normal mode (still with all
startup disabled), the drive letter reverted back to G:.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Once again, thank you for your response and suggestions. Unfortunately,
there is still no joy. I had already tried disabling all items in the
MSconfig startup tab, and it made no difference (the drive letter still
did
not stick). I had not tried Safe Mode, so that suggestion was helpful and
did produce new information.

When I boot into safe mode, the drive letter that I had previously changed
to N: remained as N:, there was no need to change it again in Safe Mode.
This was true if I started Safe Mode both with and without networking
support. Unfortunately, as soon as I rebooted in normal mode (still with
all
startup disabled), the drive letter reverted back to G:.

There is a further tab in msconfig: Services. I would tick the box
that hides all MS services, then proceed with the rest as with the
startup items.

 

[Guest]

There is a further tab in msconfig: Services. I would tick the box
that hides all MS services, then proceed with the rest as with the
startup items.

Yup - tried that too; I have the same problem with ALL entries disabled in
both the startup and the services tab (including Microsoft services
disabled). However, I have discovered that even though ZA is not running and
the service is disabled in the MSconfig services tab, it is STILL being
started on boot! I am unable to disable it or stop it from starting - looks
like I will have to do a full uninstall to do that. As this was a known
issue with prior releases last year, it certainly seems suspicious. I have
submitted this to Zone Labs.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Yup - tried that too; I have the same problem with ALL entries disabled in
both the startup and the services tab (including Microsoft services
disabled). However, I have discovered that even though ZA is not running
and
the service is disabled in the MSconfig services tab, it is STILL being
started on boot! I am unable to disable it or stop it from starting -
looks
like I will have to do a full uninstall to do that. As this was a known
issue with prior releases last year, it certainly seems suspicious. I
have
submitted this to Zone Labs.

ZA has a long reputation of being very difficult to uninstall. So maybe
M.I.5 3/4 was right all along.

 

[David Vair]

Another thing you can try. I have a DVD-Rom and DVD-RW drives in my system. In my BIOS I can set
which one has Priority, maybe your BIOS has a similar setting.

 

[M.I.5¾]

Interesting . . . I do have ZA Internet Security Suite installed (current
release level). I guess I'll try disabling that and see what happens.
Thanx
for the suggestion.

You have the latest version now, but have you had past versions?

You can try, but it will be too late. Even uninstalling Zonealarm or
installing a later unafflicted version won't undo the damage. The latest
version AFAIK does not have this problem.

I no longer recommend Zonealarm as a firewall. Good as the product was,
numerous versions in the past couple of years have shipped with unwanted
baggage. It also takes far too long to initialise itself as the machine
boots.

 

[Guest]

You have the latest version now, but have you had past versions?

You can try, but it will be too late. Even uninstalling Zonealarm or
installing a later unafflicted version won't undo the damage. The latest
version AFAIK does not have this problem.

I no longer recommend Zonealarm as a firewall. Good as the product was,
numerous versions in the past couple of years have shipped with unwanted
baggage. It also takes far too long to initialise itself as the machine
boots.

I just put this machine together, and it has never had an older version of
ZA on it. At least in my case, the nasty behavior is alive and well in the
most current version.

I agree with you about the current state of Zone Alarm. I have used it for
years, but the numerous problems with recent releases have soured me. I no
longer have it loaded on most of my machines, but I wanted to keep it on one
just for testing and comparison purposes. Now I wish I hadn't! Since I had
not experienced this particular bug before, I blew a whole week debugging it.
Surprises me that reports of the problem are not easier to find, but after
you pointed me in the right direction, I did find it on the ZA forums. Thanx.

 

[M.I.5¾]

I just put this machine together, and it has never had an older version of
ZA on it. At least in my case, the nasty behavior is alive and well in
the
most current version.

I agree with you about the current state of Zone Alarm. I have used it
for
years, but the numerous problems with recent releases have soured me. I
no
longer have it loaded on most of my machines, but I wanted to keep it on
one
just for testing and comparison purposes. Now I wish I hadn't! Since I
had
not experienced this particular bug before, I blew a whole week debugging
it.
Surprises me that reports of the problem are not easier to find, but after
you pointed me in the right direction, I did find it on the ZA forums.
Thanx.

I had believed that it had been fixed. However, a quick ask around has
suggested that it hasn't. I abandoned Zonealarm at my last rebuild (about a
year ago) so I wasn't up to speed on the latest developments.