Re-arrange device letters

[robroy6]

I have 3 internal HDD and an internal CD. Externally (USB) I have a DVD, HP Printer, and 4 HDD. My Dell 4600I runs XP Pro SP3 and has 3 MB Ram. The pc has 2 USB ports in the front and 6 ports in the rear. I use one rear port to drive a separately powered 10 USB port adapter. This gives me 17 USB(2.0) ports for connecting various devices to the pc.
1) does anyone know how XP (Logical Disk Mtgmt Services) selects the various devices and assigns them a letter?
2) I once had a USB connected 500 GB HDD that I loaded with lots of software and it was my disk E: for a long time and a lot of shortcuts used E:.
3) Recently while exploring the connection/removal of a number of old and new HDD to my system I now have my 500 GB device as G: and all my shortcuts go nowhere.
Can I change letters?
Thanks

 

[webrabbit]

Use the SUBST command. Go to the command prompt, make the assignment, then exit. The assignment is good until a reboot or it is changed by another SUBST.

If you need help with the syntax, enter SUBST /?

 

[rclarke250]

Just go into drive management, and change the drive letter of the drive at E: to something else, that frees up E:, then change G: back to E:, then you can reboot, and it will still stay E:. This is easily done by right clicking My Computer, and choosing manage. In the pop up, select disk management. Once it populates your drives, just right click the drive that says E:, and in the pop up choose change drive letters and paths. Rinse,Repeat.

 

[webrabbit]

If you wash daily, you should not repeat.

 

[robroy6]

What's this about "rinse" and "wash"? Virus on yur hands? Use OXI-xx.
Thanks for the help, the Manage app did fine and it kept through reboot.

Is there a way to do a quick reboot when testing changes. Now, I make a change, log-out & log-in (ie reboot), see how the change worked out and repeat for another change. The reboot process is "long". If I smoked, I would go outside for a cig.

 

[robroy6]

I am still having troubles with drive letters changing on me. I thought the Drive Management (DM) solution would work every time but not so!
DM's "change drive letters and paths" (CDL) sometimes doesn't let me change to the letter I want. I have many links that refer to drive E: (Elements). With E: pointing to another drive I get about 10 shortcut icons on my desktop. When I boot up and the letter is changed to say H: I try CDL and it doesn't give me E: as a choice. This happens about 30% of the time. I shut down, remove some drives and reboot. Sometimes I can get CDL to give me E: for my Elements drive and I am ok. Today I tried rebooting 3 times and the first two kept my Elements drive at E: But the 3rd time it was changed to some other letter.

I found a dos program (service program) called DISKPART which runs in XP to allow me to list, select, remove and assign letters. Sometimes the letter E: was assigned to a different drive and I have to remove E: so it's free, then assign Elements to E: and I change the removed drive to another free letter. Most of the time that works but XP may not keep it when I reboot.

I have tried to rearrange the position of my USB connected drive to see what that does to keep my Elements at E: over a reboot but it only frustrates me.

NOTE:
Is there a way to seek out all the shortcuts that use E: and change them to something like Q: and get the assignment of Elements to Q:? Maybe by picking the last letter, XP won't change it to something else.

My device assignment problem is with USB connected devices. I have 2 USB in the front of the Dell and 6 in the back. I connect one of the rear USB ports to a powered 10 port USB expander. This gives me 17 USB ports to connect my devices to. Currently I use 1 front port, 5 rear ports and 5 ports of the expander for my devices.
Does anyone know how XP scans the USB ports?

Thanks for listening.
RobRoy

 

[robroy6]

I finally have found a solution to wandering drive letters (mount points). Search the internet for USBDLM. It assists the user in managing USB device installs. It is a bit complicated and can do many, many things with letter assignments. You install USBDLM and it runs as a Win32 service for XP and Windows 7 (and others) with x32 and x64 window editions. My solution was to add file USBDLM.INI in the folder where USBDLM.EXE resides and include the correct commands. There are many sample INI's available and help files.