USB drive letter nightmare

[Jazz]

I work at a school and one of my users is the journalism and PR lady.
As you can imagine, she uses USB card readers and external hard drvies
alot.

She also has several networked drives that all my users have and need.

She has a 500 gig external hard drive which will take up drive letter E
(which is available) but sometimes she needs the ext HD AND a card
reader hooked in at the same time. If E is not available, the card
reader acts like it isnt plugged in and is assigned NO drive letter.

The computer "dings" as if detected, and no error are present, but if
the big ext HD has drive E, the card reader just wont appear in My
Computer.

Any free programs or does (God forbid they thought of this!) Windows
XP have something built in to allowe me to assign drive letters?
Thanks in advance!
Jazz Mann

 

[Bob I]

Look up Disk Management in Help and Support.

 

[Opinicus]

I work at a school and one of my users is the journalism and PR lady.
As you can imagine, she uses USB card readers and external hard drvies
alot.
She also has several networked drives that all my users have and need.
She has a 500 gig external hard drive which will take up drive letter E
(which is available) but sometimes she needs the ext HD AND a card
reader hooked in at the same time. If E is not available, the card
reader acts like it isnt plugged in and is assigned NO drive letter.
The computer "dings" as if detected, and no error are present, but if
the big ext HD has drive E, the card reader just wont appear in My
Computer.

I've encountered this problem too. My solution, which seems to work, is to
assign every device a unique name (I use the names of our pets) and a letter
through Computer Management. That way I can insert and remove devices freely
without conflicts. Another useful tip seems to be to start assigning device
letters from the END of the alphabet ("Z") and work backwards as new ones
are introduced to the system.

You might also want to do a Google on "Phantom USB" and apply the fix
associated with that from time to time. I do it every other Sunday when I do
a complete system backup and cleanup.

 

[Jazz]

"phantom USB" in google refers to a keylogger program...

 

[Opinicus]

"phantom USB" in google refers to a keylogger program...

Sorry, I should have been more exact. Do a Google search on "phantom USB" in
the newsgroups part. Specifically the microsoft.public hierarchy. There was
a thread about them recently.