Reserve drive letters

[Simon Potter]

I'm currently running XP in a network environment where the f:\ drive letter
is occupied by a network drive. My users are now attempting to use memory
sticks and by default, despite being occupied by a network drive the memory
stick uses f:\ is anyone aware of a way in which you can prevent XP from
assigning a drive occupied by a network drive ?

Thanks

Simon

 

[Bones]

xp allows you to reconfigure your netdrives
right click on my computer>map network drive
move the network drive to a different drive letter assignment. hope this
helps

 

[Simon Potter]

xp allows you to reconfigure your netdrives
right click on my computer>map network drive
move the network drive to a different drive letter assignment. hope this
helps

Many thanks for your help with this one. However changing the drive
letters manually is not an option as these machines are student machines
and our students do not have access to the disk management options.

 

[dave]

-Insert flash disk in usb port and allow it to go to "F"
-Right click on "My Computer"
-Select "Manager"
-Select "Storage" > "Disk Manager"
-The flash disk should be listed ...
-Right click on the flash disk
-Choose "Change Drive Letter and Path"
-Choose "Change"
-Assign a letter of your choice that doesn't conflict
with your network

-Choose OK

 

[gunslingor]

Found Solution

fixed two problems:

Unable to boot with external drive plugged in:
disabled legacy usb support in bios.

From device manager click policies --> optimize for performance.

Considered attempting to create an autoexec.bat file to redirect booting to the proper drive. but not sure if this is easy.
Drive letter changes:
Appears the above fixed this problem because I relabeled all my virtual drives
permanently to Z, X, Y, etc and my external drive is still M after reboot. If it changed on reboot it should have changed to F. Don't know why the system is skipping L and K though.

reassigned external drive to F: where it should be

restarting, no, actually I'll shut down and restart.

yep, external drive is still F

There is the possibility that plugging in a usb drive or another drive will screw it up, but I doubt it. Also, I'm sure the mother board doesn't pick which USB gets which drive letter at random. You just got to figurre out the order and make sure you leave the perminent usb drives in the first-to-boot USB drives.

Most virtual drives allow you to set the letters; start at the back of the alfabet.