USB flash drive won't get drive letter

[Guest]

I have a machine at work with win XP pro. C,D,E are my hard disk partitions, F is my cdrom, and I also have mapped letters G,N,P,Z
My problem is when I attach the USB flash drive, the system recognize it but won't give it the next available drive letter, that mean, if I want to read/write to the USB flash drive, I cant, its just wont appear under my computer or in the explorer, and when I go to disk management I can see it and it seems alright and I can also remove it safely from the task manager, so every time I attach it I need to manually give it a letter from the disk management
How can I fix it to get automatically the drive letters? I have try more then one USB flash drive and I had this problem with all of them
Thanks in advance
Dan

 

[Guest]

Hi

First, I would suggest you to update the mobo BIOS and chipset drivers
After updated the mobo BIOS and chipset drivers, boot into BIOS and load default settings
After loaded the default settings to bring into use of the new BIOS, you can adjust the BIOS settings to suit your OS and then save and exit
Shutdown the PC. Disconnect all USB devices including Keyboard and mouse (if any, and use a PS/2 keyboard and mouse
After all, boot in safe mode and login as administrator; then go to device manager to uninstall the
XXX PCI to USB Open Host Controller (for you USB 1.1) and then reboot
After restart the PC, windows should find the USB controller and re-install the drivers (assuming you have installed SP1
Re-connect the USB devices one at each time and check to ensure it works properly before connecting other USB devices

Hope it helps

Pete

----- Dan wrote: ----

I have a machine at work with win XP pro. C,D,E are my hard disk partitions, F is my cdrom, and I also have mapped letters G,N,P,Z
My problem is when I attach the USB flash drive, the system recognize it but won't give it the next available drive letter, that mean, if I want to read/write to the USB flash drive, I cant, its just wont appear under my computer or in the explorer, and when I go to disk management I can see it and it seems alright and I can also remove it safely from the task manager, so every time I attach it I need to manually give it a letter from the disk management
How can I fix it to get automatically the drive letters? I have try more then one USB flash drive and I had this problem with all of them
Thanks in advance
Dan

 

[Nick Burns]

I seen a post about XP and thumb drives, if you have lots of drive letters,
xp maps to one that already in use already exist and then you can never use
it. This and the fix was on the MS site. Sorry I don't have link. But it is
just what you have. If I find the link, I will repost.

Hi,

First, I would suggest you to update the mobo BIOS and chipset drivers.
After updated the mobo BIOS and chipset drivers, boot into BIOS and load default settings.
After loaded the default settings to bring into use of the new BIOS, you

can adjust the BIOS settings to suit your OS and then save and exit.

Shutdown the PC. Disconnect all USB devices including Keyboard and mouse

(if any, and use a PS/2 keyboard and mouse)

After all, boot in safe mode and login as administrator; then go to device manager to uninstall the
XXX PCI to USB Open Host Controller (for you USB 1.1) and then reboot.
After restart the PC, windows should find the USB controller and

re-install the drivers (assuming you have installed SP1)

Re-connect the USB devices one at each time and check to ensure it works

properly before connecting other USB devices.

Hope it helps.

Peter

----- Dan wrote: -----

I have a machine at work with win XP pro. C,D,E are my hard disk

partitions, F is my cdrom, and I also have mapped letters G,N,P,Z.

My problem is when I attach the USB flash drive, the system recognize

it but won't give it the next available drive letter, that mean, if I want
to read/write to the USB flash drive, I cant, its just wont appear under my
computer or in the explorer, and when I go to disk management I can see it
and it seems alright and I can also remove it safely from the task manager,
so every time I attach it I need to manually give it a letter from the disk
management.

How can I fix it to get automatically the drive letters? I have try

more then one USB flash drive and I had this problem with all of them.

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 02:31:11 -0800, "Peter"

First, I would suggest you to update the mobo BIOS and chipset drivers.

Nah, I would NOT do that!

I have a machine at work with win XP pro. C,D,E are my hard disk partitions,
F is my cdrom, and I also have mapped letters G,N,P,Z.

Don't map (network) drive letters "down to the bone", because unlike
what Win9x may have led you to expect, the LAN mapping will overrride
and hide any "real" drive that grabs that letter.

I've seen this on PCs set up as...

Primary:
C:
Extended:
D:
E:
F:
Optical:
H:

...where a Novell Network's mapped F: obscured the local F: logical
volume (which didn't get popped forwards to G: or I

I've also seen mapped drive letters get in the way of USB cameras,
which were supposed to pop up with the first free drive letter after
the local drives, but which was occupied by the LAN mapping.

I hope your BIOS update didn't porridge your mobo's bootability or
cause XP to go on a PnP rampage, WPA lockout or both

---------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Consumer Asks: "What are you?"
Market Research: ' What would you like us to be? '

 

[Guest]

I've try to update my bios, but it didnt help.
About the link from microsoft, it can help if you found it.
If you have more suggestions i would like to here.
Thanks in advance.
Dan.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem!
Everytime I try to connect a new brand of USB flashdisk to
any of our WinXP Pro systems it doesn't show up in win
explorer. Wë use a lot of mapped network drives on our
computers since our business system demands it. Among them
we use the drive letter "G". Some how, every flashdisk I
connect is given that drive letter so the conflict is
obvious. After I've changed the letter of the flashdisk in
disk manager it works fine every time I connect it but as
soon as I connect a new brand it is given the drive letter
G and thus it doesn't work in win explorer. It seems as if
the network drive always gets the higher priority in the
conflict...

-----Original Message-----
I have a machine at work with win XP pro. C,D,E are my

hard disk partitions, F is my cdrom, and I also have
mapped letters G,N,P,Z.

My problem is when I attach the USB flash drive, the

system recognize it but won't give it the next available
drive letter, that mean, if I want to read/write to the
USB flash drive, I cant, its just wont appear under my
computer or in the explorer, and when I go to disk
management I can see it and it seems alright and I can
also remove it safely from the task manager, so every time
I attach it I need to manually give it a letter from the
disk management.

How can I fix it to get automatically the drive letters?

I have try more then one USB flash drive and I had this
problem with all of them.

 

[Guest]

Ummm, could we get that reply in English, that a regular home-user (ie. non-computer whiz) might understand? I, too, have a 256meg USB thumb drive that "My Computer" refuses to assign a letter to, despite the fact that the computer tells me that the USB drive is installed and working correctly. My computer has a floppy drive (A, two optical drives (D: and E, and a multi-drive for flash cards (drives F:, G:, H: and I. We have two computers at home connected to a simple home network through a DSL Router. (Hope this info makes giving me a simple answer easier! Thanks!)

 

[Guest]

The first time you place a USB Flash drive into your machine it gets a drive-letter assigned
If you then use this drive-letter for something else, the next time you plug the Flash drive into your machine it will try and get the same drive-letter again ... and fail. The drive is available and ready it just does not get a drive-letter in Windows Explorer
To change his default drive-letter assignment
1. Unmap the drive-letter that the flash drive wants (can be anything so you may have to unmap lots of stuff to find the right one - and the drive-name will not change in Explorer when the mapping has changed
2. Access the flash drive via the appropriate drive-letter in windows to be sure it is activ
3. Open your Drive Manager (ControlPanel --> AdminTools --> ComputerMgmt
4. Select the flash drive and re-assign the drive-letter as you want for your machin
5. Re-map the original network mapping to the original drive-letter in Explore

Not obvious