My USB Drive Letter Manager solves all this. To get persistent drive letters for external drives assign one exclusive letter per drive. XP with SP3 assigns E: again to the USB drive, even E: is used as a network share. USB drive is removed, a network share at E: created, the USB drive reattached. The Service Pack 3 fixed it too (more or less). ' a problem' and since December 2007 a hotfix is available (WindowsXP-KB297694-x86-ENU.exe). XP has no problem assigning a drive to letter which is currently used as network share! Microsoft knows that this is Network and substs drives are completely unconsidered by XP here. The former assignment just doesn't exist anymore. When this happens the former assignment is overwritten and the first drive gets the first available drive letter again even its former drive letter is available when it's being attached. But the drive letter is not reserved while a drive is not present and therefore reassigned to another drive if required. So when a drive is attached again it gets the same letter as before. Windows can save exactly one assignment per drive letter. The search goes upwards in the alphabet and starts at 'A' for floppy drives, at 'D' for CD-ROM drives and at 'C' for all other types. To get rid of the 'first free letter assignment' I wrote the USB Drive Letter Manager which works under Windows 2000, XP and higher.įor a drive which XP has no drive letter assignment stored it assigns the first available drive letter.
When the USB has no USB serial then this happens again if it's attached to a different USB port. Plug'n play starts up a assigns the first available drive letter. In contrast a card reader stays attached and only the card is plugged and unplugged, so the drive letters stay.īecause it's drive and media in one, each time you plug a pen drive for the first time the Windows
Therefore the drive letter comes and goes with it. Here are some problems and solutions:Īn USB pen drive (also called 'flash drive', 'memory stick' or in german 'USB-Stick') is drive and media in one. There are many possible problems with USB drives. Thanks in advance for all your helpful hints.This page is available in German language too
If it is easier, I might also be interested in Windows 2000 since the software I’d like to run is probably running in 9x and I guess this should also work in 2000 then, but I simply don’t have that OS, so I try to get my old Windows 98 SE to run. All I want to achieve is working version of Windows 98 on my PC. So now I place all my hopes on you guys, hope you can help me with one of these two versions, which both failed so far. I waited a while, had dinner, nothing happened. I then type “setup” and hit enter (this is a functional DOS environment in which I can browse around etc…) This is all very nice but does not help installing.
– Then I copied the W98 install disk on this stick, and booted.įor a fraction of a second, I see the W98 install screen with the windows logo on it, and then the system falls back to a C:\ command prompt. Stick also boots nicely, and gives me a fancy C:\ sign when ready. – Formatted my stick with HP tool in FAT32 file system, with system files from Windows 98. Also does not find any drives when both drives are installed at the same time. Tried this with two different drives, one SATA and one IDE drive, same result.
“No drives found, aborting installation”. It tries to create the device with the name OEMCD001 but fails to do so.
The Driver used on this CD is from Oak Technoloy, called OTI-91X ATAPI CD-ROM device driver, Rev D91XV352. The Windows98 Setup files were not found. At the end of the day however, there is a message saying:
Then, after selection of Start from CD Rom, a number of drivers seem to be started. Then there is a nice Microsoft Windows 98 startup menu which asks me whether I want to start from CD ROM, or whether I want to start the computer with or without CD support. – the CD is bootable, boots nicely from the CD and asks me if I want to boot from hard disk or CD. Trouble is, the PC is quite a lot newer than W98. I’m trying to install Windows 98 SE on an industry standard PC.