Windows XP
Change the driveletter of a USB Device
A Strange problem which occurs occasionally. If you have a USB stick into a computer converts it recognizes the drive, install the appropriate driver, but you do not see it as a separate drive letter in Windows Explorer.
There may be many different causes and solutions.
When the F: drive is being mapped to a networkshare, Windows XP is not able to see this and no driveletter will be assigned to the USB device!
0. Connect the USB device to your workstation.
1. Go to the configurationscreen (Start -> Configurationscreen)
2. Select Systemmanagement.
3. Select Computermanagement in the right part of the screen.
4. Select Disk Management in the left part of the screen.
5. Select the USB device in the right part of the screen and click on the right mousebutton.
6. Select Change Drive Letter and select the driveletter you want to assign to this device.
The driveletter will be visible in the Windows Explorer when the steps above are followed.
Microsoft advises to map networkmappings from Z:, Y: etc.
Microsoft also recommends mappings to network drives starts from the bottom number (Z:, Y:, etc). This reduces the chance that the above problem will occur considerably smaller.
Hmm .. the Microsoft solutions is more some kind of cheap workaround, anyway, always good to know that there are alternatives!
There may be many different causes and solutions.
One of the problems that can cause this problem is the fact that Windows XP assign the first available driveletter to the USB device after the hard drives and CD / DVD drives available (E: or F: ).
When the F: drive is being mapped to a networkshare, Windows XP is not able to see this and no driveletter will be assigned to the USB device!
One of the easiest ways to solve this is to manually assign a driveletter to the USB stick. To do this, you take the following steps:
0. Connect the USB device to your workstation.
1. Go to the configurationscreen (Start -> Configurationscreen)
2. Select Systemmanagement.
3. Select Computermanagement in the right part of the screen.
4. Select Disk Management in the left part of the screen.
5. Select the USB device in the right part of the screen and click on the right mousebutton.
6. Select Change Drive Letter and select the driveletter you want to assign to this device.
The driveletter will be visible in the Windows Explorer when the steps above are followed.
Microsoft advises to map networkmappings from Z:, Y: etc.
Microsoft also recommends mappings to network drives starts from the bottom number (Z:, Y:, etc). This reduces the chance that the above problem will occur considerably smaller.
Hmm .. the Microsoft solutions is more some kind of cheap workaround, anyway, always good to know that there are alternatives!
