Drive Letter Reassign Doesn't Persist After Reboot (XP2 Pro)

[Doug_B]

Not sure if this is more hardware or software:

I have a DVD Burner installed in my AMD-based system. Just installed a clean copy of XP Pro w SP2 Upgrade. From the appropriate Administration function, I am able to successfully reassign the drive letter associated with the burner. All subsequent functions within the current session recognize the new drive letter. Additionally, the registry entry that I believe is supposed to change does reflect the change accurately (HKLM/system/mounteddevices).

However, after rebooting the system, the drive letter reverts to its initial setting, i.e., the default assignment expected for an IDE drive after all the hard disk partitions are assigned. I also have a SCSI CD-RW in the system which has no such problem, as its reassigned drive letter does persist through reboots. I have also had complete success with remapping a logical drive on the second of 2 IDE hard disks (for test purposes). I uninstalled and reinstalled the burner without success in this area. I haven't done any burning with the drive yet within the XP environment, but all reading functions seem to be OK, and I have had no problems with the drive when running Win98SE (see below).

The DVD burner is a Benq 1640 on the second IDE (PATA) channel, the only device on this channel. My mboard is an Epox with the VIA KT600 chipset. I loaded what was at the time (about 2 weeks ago) the latest VIA Hyperion driver package, which includes an IDE driver(s). This was one of the first things I did after XP installation, so I don't know if the problem existed before the Hyperion installation. The first IDE channel has 2 hard disks. In case it's significant, this is currently set up as a dual boot system, with the XP partition with the boot files residing at the beginning of the first HDU (XP's windows directory et al are on a partition on the second HDU), and Win98SE loaded on the second partition of the first HDU (again, I have Win98's windows directory on yet another partition on the second HDU). I use a partition manager to manage this. Other than this particular problem, I have seen no problems with either OS environment.

I used the DVD burner to install XP, if that matters. With Win98SE running, I have no problem with drive letter reassignment with this burner. I also have had no problem with an IDE CD reader on the Win2K system I use at work. Unfortunately, I do not have another IDE optical drive to try on my system in question.

All suggestions on the cause of and solution to my problem are welcome. As I am not particularly familiar with XP, I probably don't know all the troubleshooting avenues available. Been using Win98 for soooo long. I was unsuccessful at finding a solution in the MS knowledgebase.

Thanks.

Doug

[trackrat]

Try this, I hope this is what you are after.

Click Start / right click My Computer / from the drop down box click Manage / click Disk Management / Right click the drive that you want tochange the letter for.

[djohn]

Hello Doug_B and welcome to the forum. I'm having a little trouble following your post, my fault not yours. If it is as I think, then trackrat's suggestion will do what you wish. From disk managment you should be able to assign any letter you wish to any drive except of course your C: drive. Only problem some people have when first trying this method is if a drive is already using a letter you want to assign to new drive it will not let you, or if it does it will revert back as soon as you boot.

What I do is to move all my drives to the end of the alphabet giving them letters of w x y z etc. then take each drive in the order I want them and assign a new letter to it after the C: drive. Sometimes an optical drive can be stuborn and want to take the first letter after your C: drive giving you a C: drive then D: for the optical drive then E: F: G: and so on for your other hard disk or partitions. Kick it back a few times though and it should take. :)

[Doug_B]

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, I am using the Disk Management function and am successful in manipulating the drive letters with it for the current session. Per the suggestion to juggle the drive letters around a bit, I did move a bunch of the HD partitions to other drive letters, and when I rebooted, the DVD burner's drive letter changed to the first available drive letter (which is not what had been assigned to it prior to the reboot), thus moving up in front of the reassigned HD partitions (thus the HD partition reassignments did survive the reboot). So the burner is consistently being reassigned to the first available drive letter on reboot, independent of its reassignment prior to reboot.

Doug

[trackrat]

Are you by any chance using the latest version of Zone Alarm firewall?.

[Doug_B]

Are you by any chance using the latest version of Zone Alarm firewall?.

Keep going... (their entire security suite, to be exact).

Doug

[trackrat]

Have a read of this.

http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/board/m...essage.id=56550

[Doug_B]

Have a read of this.

http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/board/m...essage.id=56550

I much appreciate the heads up and link. I do have this version of ZA and the problem that I have is shared by these folks.

Doug