Local Drive Letters Jumbled

Well, one day I will learn to leave things alone <smile>

Decided to do a firmware upgrade on my two Optical drives. Both ASUS
DRW-2014L1 (drives E and F). Running Vista 64 Bit Ultimate

Running the Firmware exe file it upgraded drive E and did not seem to
touch drive F. Not sure if there is a command line parameter to do a
specific drive? The ASUS Support site was less than helpful.

So decided to Disable Drive E and then run the Upgrade on the only drive
left. That then changed all my storage drive letters around especially
my Data drive D (500 Gb Internal). Upgrade didn't work and the computer
was a mess as quite a lot of programs not registered and (My) Documents
on the D drive not working. Re-enabled the optical drive and rebooted
and then did a system restore back to earlier yesterday and that fixed
the drive letters and registered programs on the D drive.

Now I have one Optical drive with v1.01 firmware and one with 1.0. Have
had a couple of BSOD's, so I am generally pissed at myself!

If anyone has any pointers, so this doesn't happen again, much
appreciated and how to get the other drives firmware upgraded (reason I
did this was a problem writing again to an R/W disk and thought the
firmware upgrade may help)

Frenchy

Hi,
Whenever you make changes like hardware or change partitions windows will
rescan and re-assign drive letters, its a real pain in the arse at times.
However you can change the drive letters for your devices above the `C` boot
drive manually.
Just go into admin tools / computer management /disk management.
Right click the device and click change drive letters.
Its always a good idea to assign the CD drives to a higher letter when you
first install the o/s, (ie. WX ) that way any further partition created or
extra drives added will be assigned to a letter below the cd`s.
This will prevent problems after software was installed from the Cd drive
and the pc is looking to find that drive letter which could of changed.
Updating firmware should be done with caution as you could screw up a drive,
it probably would have been better to unplug one of the drives first as they
are of the same type.
Regards,
Graham.....





"Frenchy" <invalid@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:g7l3a8$sau$1@registered.motzarella.org...
> Well, one day I will learn to leave things alone <smile>
>
> Decided to do a firmware upgrade on my two Optical drives. Both ASUS
> DRW-2014L1 (drives E and F). Running Vista 64 Bit Ultimate
>
> Running the Firmware exe file it upgraded drive E and did not seem to
> touch drive F. Not sure if there is a command line parameter to do a
> specific drive? The ASUS Support site was less than helpful.
>
> So decided to Disable Drive E and then run the Upgrade on the only drive
> left. That then changed all my storage drive letters around especially my
> Data drive D (500 Gb Internal). Upgrade didn't work and the computer was
> a mess as quite a lot of programs not registered and (My) Documents on the
> D drive not working. Re-enabled the optical drive and rebooted and then
> did a system restore back to earlier yesterday and that fixed the drive
> letters and registered programs on the D drive.
>
> Now I have one Optical drive with v1.01 firmware and one with 1.0. Have
> had a couple of BSOD's, so I am generally pissed at myself!
>
> If anyone has any pointers, so this doesn't happen again, much appreciated
> and how to get the other drives firmware upgraded (reason I did this was a
> problem writing again to an R/W disk and thought the firmware upgrade may
> help)
>
> Frenchy

GrahamH wrote:
>
> Hi,
> Whenever you make changes like hardware or change partitions windows
> will rescan and re-assign drive letters, its a real pain in the arse at
> times.
> However you can change the drive letters for your devices above the `C`
> boot drive manually.
> Just go into admin tools / computer management /disk management.
> Right click the device and click change drive letters.
> Its always a good idea to assign the CD drives to a higher letter when
> you first install the o/s, (ie. WX ) that way any further partition
> created or extra drives added will be assigned to a letter below the cd`s.
> This will prevent problems after software was installed from the Cd
> drive and the pc is looking to find that drive letter which could of
> changed.
> Updating firmware should be done with caution as you could screw up a
> drive, it probably would have been better to unplug one of the drives
> first as they are of the same type.
> Regards,
> Graham.....
>
>
>
>
>
> "Frenchy" <invalid@invalid.com> wrote in message
> news:g7l3a8$sau$1@registered.motzarella.org...
>> Well, one day I will learn to leave things alone <smile>
>>
>> Decided to do a firmware upgrade on my two Optical drives. Both ASUS
>> DRW-2014L1 (drives E and F). Running Vista 64 Bit Ultimate
>>
>> Running the Firmware exe file it upgraded drive E and did not seem to
>> touch drive F. Not sure if there is a command line parameter to do a
>> specific drive? The ASUS Support site was less than helpful.
>>
>> So decided to Disable Drive E and then run the Upgrade on the only
>> drive left. That then changed all my storage drive letters around
>> especially my Data drive D (500 Gb Internal). Upgrade didn't work and
>> the computer was a mess as quite a lot of programs not registered and
>> (My) Documents on the D drive not working. Re-enabled the optical
>> drive and rebooted and then did a system restore back to earlier
>> yesterday and that fixed the drive letters and registered programs on
>> the D drive.
>>
>> Now I have one Optical drive with v1.01 firmware and one with 1.0.
>> Have had a couple of BSOD's, so I am generally pissed at myself!
>>
>> If anyone has any pointers, so this doesn't happen again, much
>> appreciated and how to get the other drives firmware upgraded (reason
>> I did this was a problem writing again to an R/W disk and thought the
>> firmware upgrade may help)
>>
>> Frenchy
>

Thanks the reply. Yes, I will lock my Optical drive letters, so this
never repeats.
I did the Firmware upgrade because there was a small problem in burning,
seems that problem may have been caused by the Lightscribe driver in
Task Manager. I have changed that to not load at start-up. I am
waiting on ASUS support to tell me how to use the Firmware upgrade via a
command line with the F drive as a parameter. I think they may be all
watching the Olympics <smile> as slow to answer!

Regards
Frenchy

Frenchy wrote:
> GrahamH wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>> Whenever you make changes like hardware or change partitions windows
>> will rescan and re-assign drive letters, its a real pain in the arse
>> at times.
>> However you can change the drive letters for your devices above the
>> `C` boot drive manually.
>> Just go into admin tools / computer management /disk management.
>> Right click the device and click change drive letters.
>> Its always a good idea to assign the CD drives to a higher letter when
>> you first install the o/s, (ie. WX ) that way any further partition
>> created or extra drives added will be assigned to a letter below the
>> cd`s.
>> This will prevent problems after software was installed from the Cd
>> drive and the pc is looking to find that drive letter which could of
>> changed.
>> Updating firmware should be done with caution as you could screw up a
>> drive, it probably would have been better to unplug one of the drives
>> first as they are of the same type.
>> Regards,
>> Graham.....
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> "Frenchy" <invalid@invalid.com> wrote in message
>> news:g7l3a8$sau$1@registered.motzarella.org...
>>> Well, one day I will learn to leave things alone <smile>
>>>
>>> Decided to do a firmware upgrade on my two Optical drives. Both ASUS
>>> DRW-2014L1 (drives E and F). Running Vista 64 Bit Ultimate
>>>
>>> Running the Firmware exe file it upgraded drive E and did not seem to
>>> touch drive F. Not sure if there is a command line parameter to do a
>>> specific drive? The ASUS Support site was less than helpful.
>>>
>>> So decided to Disable Drive E and then run the Upgrade on the only
>>> drive left. That then changed all my storage drive letters around
>>> especially my Data drive D (500 Gb Internal). Upgrade didn't work
>>> and the computer was a mess as quite a lot of programs not registered
>>> and (My) Documents on the D drive not working. Re-enabled the
>>> optical drive and rebooted and then did a system restore back to
>>> earlier yesterday and that fixed the drive letters and registered
>>> programs on the D drive.
>>>
>>> Now I have one Optical drive with v1.01 firmware and one with 1.0.
>>> Have had a couple of BSOD's, so I am generally pissed at myself!
>>>
>>> If anyone has any pointers, so this doesn't happen again, much
>>> appreciated and how to get the other drives firmware upgraded (reason
>>> I did this was a problem writing again to an R/W disk and thought the
>>> firmware upgrade may help)
>>>
>>> Frenchy
>>
>
> Thanks the reply. Yes, I will lock my Optical drive letters, so this
> never repeats.
> I did the Firmware upgrade because there was a small problem in burning,
> seems that problem may have been caused by the Lightscribe driver in
> Task Manager. I have changed that to not load at start-up. I am
> waiting on ASUS support to tell me how to use the Firmware upgrade via a
> command line with the F drive as a parameter. I think they may be all
> watching the Olympics <smile> as slow to answer!
>
> Regards
> Frenchy
Unfortunately Disk Management doesn't allow you to lock the drive
letters (just move them), guess I will have to troll the Internet for a
freebie to do this

Frenchy

This is related to my question. I'd like to be able to lock my current
drive letters because when I add a new USB hard drive Windows Vista Home
Edition has been giving it a letter that was already in use and renaming
all those that were below that letter. Last time I had to manually
change four different drive letters. Why it doesn't just assign the next
unused drive letter is beyond me. So I wonder if there is some kind of
third party software that can solve this problem?


--
larrydonline

larrydonline wrote:
> This is related to my question. I'd like to be able to lock my current
> drive letters because when I add a new USB hard drive Windows Vista Home
> Edition has been giving it a letter that was already in use and renaming
> all those that were below that letter. Last time I had to manually
> change four different drive letters. Why it doesn't just assign the next
> unused drive letter is beyond me. So I wonder if there is some kind of
> third party software that can solve this problem?
>
>
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/d...ector_37494_p/

This may work, but I ain't tried it. Seems to be free and while it does
a bunch of things, it does allow drive letter locking.

Report back if you try it and it works

Frenchy

Thanks for the link, Frenchy. So far it appears to work as advertised.
It did lock the drives, even locks access to opening them by the
operating system. When I plugged in a new USB drive it took an unused
drive letter this time.

When you lock or unlock drives, you have to restart before it takes
effect, so the changes must be applied at registry level. This could be
a handy tool for someone who wants to keep his personal files all on one
drive so no one else can access it. It allows for password protection
too.


--
larrydonline

larrydonline wrote:
> Thanks for the link, Frenchy. So far it appears to work as advertised.
> It did lock the drives, even locks access to opening them by the
> operating system. When I plugged in a new USB drive it took an unused
> drive letter this time.
>
> When you lock or unlock drives, you have to restart before it takes
> effect, so the changes must be applied at registry level. This could be
> a handy tool for someone who wants to keep his personal files all on one
> drive so no one else can access it. It allows for password protection
> too.
>
>
Did it let you download a free evaluation?

After I posted the above link, I followed it through to the download
page and it looked like it wanted to charge you?

Frenchy

The license is $39 for a single user. You don't have to have the license
to run it. But I don't know how long that would last if you continued to
use it without registering. The utility makes more sense for a system
administrator of some sort who doesn't want everyone under him getting
into all the different drives in the system. I may not need to run it
again for a long time if ever, since the one use solved my problem with
the drive letters changing. Others may find it useful on an ongoing
basis in which case it would be worth registering.


--
larrydonline