Changeing drive letters

[AW]

I did just have a normal system. A floppy A:, a hard C: and a CD D:
Then I installed a second hard disk. Everything is okay with it, but it's now taken over the D: drive letter. So my CD is E: This is no good because when I try to play games that use the CD they look at D:, when they need to look at E:
How can I get the CD back to D: and the HDD to E:?

[Fingers]

Well, I don't think that's gonna happen, sorry. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif
Unless you install third party software to assign drive letters, Windows will always assign IDE hard drives before removable devices (CD-Roms).

There may be a way to get your apps and games to look at "E", but it might require some manual editing. Hopefully some of our more technical members can help you out on this one.

Another option, is to re-install your games. This way they will automatically know which letter the CD is, but wait and see if someone can provide a better option first.


I would recommend manually assigning a higher letter, say for example "N" or even "Z" to your CD devices, by doing so, adding hard drives and/or new HDD partitions won't leave you in this situation again.
You can find out how to change the letters of any removable devices (CD-Rom, CD-R, Zip ect.) by clicking here, (http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/Forum2/HTML/009849.html) but your hard drives are going to be first, starting with C:

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

[JimG]

AW, I have the same problem and can't find a way around it. I installed a SCSI HD for win2k, and now my drive letters are all messed up! My games can't find the CD cuz all the letters shifted. I have to reformat Win98 anyway (due to a frequent crashing of explorer, IE, and a few other programs). I'm following Fingers adivce and putting the CD-ROM and CD-R at the end of the alphabet. Wish I had a better answer.

[This message has been edited by JimG (edited 10-23-2000).]

[AW]

Well thanks anyway. At least I know I can't change it with a snap of my fingers. Imagine letting us change the CD ROM letter, but not the HDD letter. See, I knew how to change the CD's letter, and just took for granted that it would be the same for a hard drive.
http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif
Why?

[Fingers]

Just hang in there, I don't have the answer, but someone here does.

If you really, really want to make the CD-Rom "D" and the 2nd HDD "E", then check out Letter Assigner 2000 (http://www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/index.html) . But if I were you, I'd hang loose for a while and see what other replies you get.

[Imperion1]

Alright, try this.
First disconnect the ribbon cable from your second Hard drive. Boot up to windows, right click on My Computer, click device manager, click cd rom, click on your cd rom that is installed, click properties, click settings, at the bottom is Reserved Drive letter. Start Drive Letter: D an for End Drive Letter you can set that for D if that is gonna be your only cd rom or E for 2 cd roms etc.

[Sterling_Aug]

Win2K Pro easily lets you assign or change drive letter assignments without moving cables, deleting drives, or anything so drastic.

Click on control panel, then administrative tools, then computer management, then storage, then disk management (local), then move the cursor to the last drive in the series (CD Drive E). Right click and select "change drive letter". Make it the next higher letter (F) so you make room for the other changes. Select the CD drive and make it D. Now go back to the new drive F and make it E. Save the changes and now you have manually assigned drive letters.

[jeana]

If you simply want your programs that point to the CD-ROM to work without reinstalling, and don't much care about which letter it uses, you can edit your registry by following these instructions (works for Win9x):

"Using the Registry Editor to Change Drive Letter References:

You can use the Windows Registry Editor to edit drive letter references in the Windows Registry. The following information is provided for informational purposes only, and if used you are doing so at your own risk. Always backup the registry before making any changes. The Registry Editor (regedit) has a Find feature, as part of the Edit profile, that you can use to locate and manually edit drive letter designations as necessary. As an example, if your CD-ROM was changed from F to D, then you would simply find F: and replace it with D:. This procedure will take care of all registry references, but you will still need to change the properties for any Start menu items and desktop icons. This is performed by right-clicking the item and selecting its properties. It is still possible though, after all of this effort, that you will have missed some pointer reference, in which case you will need to reinstall the program or programs affected by the changes you made."

What type of hard drive? A couple of hard drive manufacturers, like Quantum (http://www.quantum.com/app_notes/app_note_ata_drvletters.htm) have utilities that will do the conversion for you.



[This message has been edited by jeana (edited 10-24-2000).]

[AW]

I'm getting a lot of help here! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
Unfortunately, the 2nd hdd is still d. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif
My start and end drive letters for the cd were set to d, but they were just forced to become e. So disconnecting the drive and giving the cd d again probably wont help.
I'm actually running Win98, so that wont help me. And I don't really just want to change the cd back to d for the games (there aren't that many) I just like my cd being d.

[tolemac]

AW..Did the exact same thing myself, except I partitioned the new drive, so D and E are taken, and the cd is now F. You need to go into your autoexec.bat, and config.sys, and change the drive letter so that your programs won't look for D anymore, and will look for E.
Now if I can only get DOS to recognize it http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/biggrin.gif
Good luck!

[Donkey]

You won't be able to have the Cd as drive d, you will just have to settle for e:. it is just the way windows does things. (i think)
I use a little utility call drive mapper which comes with partition magic which will scan the system for all references to a certain drive and replace them with the new drive label. have done this everal times when i have added new HDs or partitioned existing ones.

[Fingers]

AW,

Jeana and Donkey's solution sounds like what you want. I'd try to find a program such as Drive mapper to automatically re-link your games and apps to the CD-Rom rather than manually editing the registry.

I just knew these guys and gals would come through. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[AW]

http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/biggrin.gif I took the easiest way and went and got Letter Assigner www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/index.html (http://www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/index.html)
I downloaded the small zip, extracted it and installed the program. It took five seconds to change the letters around and after restarting the computer, my cd was back to d, and the 2nd hdd was e. Great!
Thankyouuuuuuu everybody.

[This message has been edited by AW (edited 10-25-2000).]