CD-ROM has become a removable disk drive

[keithhowell]

For whatever reason, the OS (W2000) now shows my CD-ROM drive as a removeable disk and whenever I click on its icon I get the message "Please insert a disk into drive E:" (if I do it doesn't do anything - simply leaves the message up). I don't have a drive D showing any more and I have an Iomega USB CR-RW which now shows (as a CD-ROM) as drive F.

I recently installed a HP Photosmart A516 printer (USB) and it shows up in device manager as a Hard Disk under the title "HP Photosmart 510 USB Device"

Any ideas or help in getting it back will be very much apppreciated

Keith

[djohn]

Try a right click on your 'My Computer' Icon, choose, manage/disk managment and alter your drive letters from there. You hard drives should be showing as Main drive or (0) disk which is C:/ disk then if anything else is taking up the next letter (D) and you want to use that for your optical drive, give whatever is using D:/ a letter of X or Y. Asign D:/ to your optical drive then bring the other drive/s back to E:/ or F:/ or any order you want.

Please post back if this does not help.

[keithhowell]

Hi DJohn,

Thanks for that. As it is delving into realms that I am not familiar with I want to make absolutely sure I have explained my problem clearly. The CD-ROM in my tower is the one that is now shown as a removeable hard drive, with drive E assigned. My external CD-RW is assigned F (When plugged into the USB port) and it works fine. If I unplug it and replace it with a memory stick, the stick gets assigned as drive D and it works fine but the tower CD-ROM stays at drive E all the time. If I change the F assignment of the external CD-RW to D what will happen to the memory stick when I plug it in? Also, will any software that I have running expect to see drives at specific assigned letters?

Try a right click on your 'My Computer' Icon, choose, manage/disk managment and alter your drive letters from there. You hard drives should be showing as Main drive or (0) disk which is C:/ disk then if anything else is taking up the next letter (D) and you want to use that for your optical drive, give whatever is using D:/ a letter of X or Y. Asign D:/ to your optical drive then bring the other drive/s back to E:/ or F:/ or any order you want.

Please post back if this does not help.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Since this is causing you additional troubles (in a separate thread), I will respond you here in this original thread.

I couldn't quite follow this one, as I couldn't "see" the problem. Could you please give a list of what you would like to see, and what you really see. E.g.

What I see

A:

floppy drive

B:

unused

C:

Windows partition

D:

secondary partition

E:

CD-ROM drive

F:

IOMEGA

G:

...

What I want to see

A:

...

B:

...

C:

...

D:

...

E:

...

F:

...

G:

...

Also, are the removable devices permanently attached, or do you remove them sometimes?

[keithhowell]

Hi Pat,

I turned my PC on this am and what I see is

A: floppy drive

B: unused

C: Windows partition

D: CD-ROM drive

E: IOMEGA USB CD-RW

X: Removable Disk

Which is even more confusing as I have done nothing since my last post

(other than power down) What I was seeing yesterday was

A: floppy drive

B: unused

C: Windows partition

D: unused

E: IOMEGA USB CD-RW

X: Removable Disk

I have the IOMEGA on a flying USB lead which I swap out for a memory stick or my camera

when necessary Which I am going to do now (I notice I have 2 little "remove" icons, 1 saying "Unplug or Eject hardware" and the other "Safely remove storage device - Drive E:)

The memory stick took the place of the IOMEGA, the 2nd of the little remove icons has gone and Explorer Utility popped up a message saying "Please insert a disk into DriveX:"

I am now going to remove the memory stick using the remaining remove icon

What I now see is

A: floppy drive

B: unused

C: Windows partition

D: Compact Disc

X: Removable Disk

i.e. everything seems to be normal except for the appearance of the unknwn driveX: object.

Should I simply remove drive X: now

When I removed the meory stick it also disconnected my ADSL modem

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Thanks, Keith - more clear now.

So where does the mysterious X: drive come from? Normally, any removable disk would automatically occupy the next free drive letter, in this case F. Unless all drive letters from F to W were disabled?

Do you have anything in your startup that could cause this?

What do you see if you boot into Safe Mode?

[keithhowell]

Hi Pat,

I thought I would explain about the X: drive while I am still up and running then I will power off and restart

This all started because my D: drive suddenly decided it was a removeable drive and not a CD-ROM any more. Following DJohn's advice when I suddenly got access to My Computer again, I changed the drive assigment of this so called removeable drive from D: to X: to see if it would allow the system to resurrect the CD-ROM at D: (which it didn't yesterday but did this morning)

Now I am going to try a safestart

(I hope I will be able to get back on-line eventually)

Bye for now

[doug]

See you soon!

[keithhowell]

High guys

Safe Start worked OK and gave me

A: floppy drive

B: unused

C: Windows partition

D: CD-ROM drive

E: IOMEGA USB CD-RW

X: Removable Disk

I restarted again with an ordinary start and that is the same

Shall I just accept that I have this spurious drive X: and leave it sitting there or shall I remove it and risk the unknown?

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I wouldn't bother too much for now, as it doesn't cause you any trouble. Just curious, though - if you click on X:, does it show you any contents. Or give you an error message?

[keithhowell]

It pops up a message window asking me to instal a disk

I wouldn't bother too much for now, as it doesn't cause you any trouble. Just curious, though - if you click on X:, does it show you any contents. Or give you an error message?