USB drive letters still visible even after ejecting and disabling

[Mary]

I used to have 3 external USB hard drives permanentaly connected to my
computer and I had one USB drive that I would connect off and on. I am
intending to consolidate all my external drives and have 'ejected' all of
them. I also went into Disk Mgmt and disabled them. However, My computer
and also Disk Mgmt. still lists "G, H, I, J" drive. If I add another drive,
it shows up as K or later.

Oh, I also went into the registry to delete the references there.

How can I get rid of G, H, I, J and free them up for re-use ?

Thanks,

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I used to have 3 external USB hard drives permanentaly connected to my
computer and I had one USB drive that I would connect off and on. I am
intending to consolidate all my external drives and have 'ejected' all of
them. I also went into Disk Mgmt and disabled them. However, My
computer
and also Disk Mgmt. still lists "G, H, I, J" drive. If I add another
drive,
it shows up as K or later.

Oh, I also went into the registry to delete the references there.

How can I get rid of G, H, I, J and free them up for re-use ?

Thanks,

There is no "disable" option in diskmgmt.msc, only a "remove"
option. This is the one you need to select.

Where exactly did you delete them in the registry? Did you
subsequently reboot the machine?

 

[Mary]

Thanks for the prompt response.

Yes, I have rebooted the machine.

On the registry, I had deleted the entry in HKEY-LOCAL-MACHINE;SYSTEM;
MOUNTED DEVICES: DosDevices/H etc. Did this by right-clicking and deleting.


In checking the registry, these entries are back in the registry.


Mary

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Thanks for the prompt response.

Yes, I have rebooted the machine.

On the registry, I had deleted the entry in HKEY-LOCAL-MACHINE;SYSTEM;
MOUNTED DEVICES: DosDevices/H etc. Did this by right-clicking and
deleting.

In checking the registry, these entries are back in the registry.

Mary

Let's try a little experiment. Do it with all USB deviced unplugged.
1. Download this file to c:\DiskParms.vbs. You will find it at this
location for a limited time.
http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/1676800_zti1c/diskparms.vbs
2. Click Start / Run / cmd {OK}
3. Type the following commands:
mountvol>c:\test.txt{Enter}
fsutil fsinfo volumeinfo g:>>c:\test.txt{Enter}
dir g:\>>c:\test.txt{Enter}
cscript //nologo c:\diskparms.vbs >>c:\test.txt{Enter}
notepad c:\test.txt{Enter}
4. Paste the contents of the file you see into your reply.