XP reassigns static drive letters at restart

[Guest]

I am running XP Pro, SP2 on a 3GHz P4 (Dell Optiplex). The machine has a
single hard disk, partitioned into 3 drives, a ZIp drive and a DVD/CD-RW
drive, all on IDE controllers. Additionally, I have an external USB hard
disk.

I had the system configured with the 3 hard disk partitions as C:, D:, E:,
the CD-RW as W: and the Zip drive as Z:. Additionally, I have a number of
network drives at H:, I:, M:, N:, P: etc. The USB hard drive was
automatically assigned F: at boot.

This setup was stable for a long time (years!)

The machine has recently started re-assigning the CD-RW drive to F:, which
means that the USB drive maps to G:.

It is possible to reassign the drive leters using the Disk Management
Console, but the mapping does not (necessarily) survive a reboot.

AV software (Sophos, updated daily) has not reported anything untoward, and
I've run Adaware, MS Defender and the run of anti-malware programs. All the
latest MS patches are in place.

Any suggestions.please?

Thanks

Geoff Cusick

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Zonealarm is known for causing this effect.
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...p.hardware/browse_frm/thread/7f955e9bc27fa903



Uwe

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Uwe, but I'm not running ZoneAlarm. Following the theme, I have also
tried disabling the Windows firewall, without success.

Geoff

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Have you recentely installed something like burning software,
anti virus or 'anti something else' software?

If there is no other solution then you can change the CD drives
letter on every startup.
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/remount.zip
Sample:
remount f: z:

It requires admin previleges.



Uwe

 

[Guest]

Thanks again Uwe. Only change in that area that I've made is to install the
release version of Windows Defender. I'll try removing it, to see if that
makes a difference. Otherwise, still using the same AV as for ages (Sophos).

Geoff

 

[inkleputDEL]

Thanks, Uwe, but I'm not running ZoneAlarm. Following the theme, I have
also tried disabling the Windows firewall, without success.

Geoff

I can't offer a solution, but I can comment. As I bought it, my T42 XP
Pro SP2 changed drive latters all the time. A re-installation from new
IBM OEM CD's did the same thing. A re-re-installation doesn't, so far -
knock on wood and throw salt over my shoulder. My dad would have said,
"It's the nature of the beast."

JimL

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