CD/DVD letters changing after reboot
Friday, October 30, 2009 at 9:14 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Pietro M. Picca
(2 messages posted)
Hi!
I wrote on this forum some time ago, sure to have solved my problem, but actually
it hasn't been permanently.
I am experiencing the following issue: I have two DVD-ROM drives on my computer,
named V: and W:, and two hard drives, C: and D:. The OS is Windows XP with (now)
SP3, but the problem was occurring even with SP2. Sometimes, due to some weird reasons,
after a reboot, DVD-ROM drives are changing their letters to E: and F:, the two smallest
available letters. No matter if I change them back manually to V: and W: through
Disk Management. This setting is kept for the duration of the current session. At
the following reboot, they revert to E: and F:.
After checking about this issue on several forums, I understood that the last configuration
I am trying to store in the registry, for some reasons, is marked as invalid and
hence not kept, so Windows XP at the following reboot reloads the last known working
configuration. Well, the problem is identified, yet far from being solved. After
two or three months, I found out what I had thought to be a permanent solution by
modifying the registry in the following way, without resorting to Disk Management
tool among the administrative tools in the Control Panel.
The situation in the undesired configuration is shown under the following registry
key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\DOS Devices
I find:
\\DosDevices\C: pointing to the first hard drive
\\DosDevices\D: pointing to the second hard drive
\\DosDevices\E: pointing to the second DVD drive
\\DosDevices\F: pointing to the first DVD drive
These two last ones, instead of V: and W:.
My workaround is the following:
1. rename \\DosDevices\E: into \\DosDevices\W:
2. rename \\DosDevices\F: into \\DosDevices\V:
3. create a new key \\DosDevices\E: as REG_BINARY
4. copy the content of \\DosDevices\D: into the newly created \\DosDevices\E:
These two last passages prevent Windows from re-assigning DVD letters at the following
reboot in a wrong way, but anyway during the bootstrap Windows finds that the second
physical hard drive is pointed both by D: and E: and automatically deletes E: (the
higher one). So, at the following reboot I manage to save the configuration that
I wanted.
This solves temporarily my problem. I have verified that from time to time, the issue
is getting back. And unfortunately
I verified that not always this explained procedure is successful. Sometimes, I have
to go along these steps three or four times, before obtaining the right configuration
properly "recorded".
No explanation about the cause of this malfunctioning. Is there someone helping me
in solving more permanently
this problem? This is really annoying, in addition to representing a loss of time...
Thanks, cheers,
Pietro M. Picca
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