new local drive letter is hidden by network letter

[Guest]

I am working in the IT Business and often I have customers who mapped a
server drive to a letter after the cd-rom drive.

example:
local C:
cd-rom D:
server drive E:

now I have the following problem. If I connect a usb stick Windows assigns
the same letter like the server drive. (in my examplke: the usb stick has E
that can be seen in the disk management.

now I know that I can assign a new letter to the USB stick or I change the
network drive letter. thats clear. I was on the opion that windows would
recognize the letter of the mapped drive and assigns the next possible
letter. but obviously that is not right. my question is what are the
mechanisms behind this behaviour. why is a mapping to server handled
differently to a local drive letter?

I saw this behaviour mostly on WinXP Pro Systems, but I think that does not
matter...

Thanx ck

 

[GTS]

This is a well known issue, and it is best to map network drives starting
from the end of the alphabet to avoid the problem. As to why, it's
basically a matter of bad programming. There's no reason technically that
Windows couldn't be made to properly handle the fact that there are mapped
network drives and take that into account when assigning drive letters for
removable devices, but unfortunately it doesn't.