Missing Drive Letter

Yes, I had checked that.

In the meantime, I have realised that drive E: is not
actually missing, but has been somehow hijacked by my DVD
burner (which always used to be drive "G:") -- I didn't
notice the DVD drive because, without a disk in it, it
doesn't appear in the list in the Management Console.

For some reason, the two drives swapped drive letters.
When I change them back the way I want them, they stay
that way until I reboot, then they swap again.

The USB drive has been drive "E:" for at least two years,
and the DVD burner has been drive "G:" since February. I
can't think of anything that changed on the system between
it being OK the day before and my noticing the problem
yesterday morning. All I did was a software upgrade and
installed a few internet utilities -- none of these have
any obvious relationship to the drive system or the DVD
drive. All of the testing and troubleshooting I have done
subsequently is with these and all auto-load/start
software disabled. Here is what I've found so far:

If I disable the DVD drive in Device Manager and then set
the other drive (an external USB drive) to its correct
letter, the USB drive stays that way under multiple re-
boots. When I enable the DVD drive again, it is assigned
as drive "G:", and everything is hunky-dory until I re-
boot -- then they swap again. I tried deleting the DVD
drive in Device Manager, setting the USB drive back
to "E:" and re-booting -- the OS detects new hardware (the
DVD drive), installs it, and then the drive letters get
swapped again! Very frustrating.

The only thing I haven't yet tried is to physically
disconnect the DVD drive and re-install from scratch
(although it seems with with Windows nothing is ever
really "from scratch" -- once something has been installed
there seems to be a "persistence of memory").

What can make a particular drive (other than the boot
drive, which **must** be C grab a particular drive
letter? What is the point of the Disk Management plug-in
that allows you to change drive letters to whatever you
choose, if they can be automatically reset by the OS? Is
there somewhere in the registry where this may have become
sticky somehow?

>-----Original Message-----
>Hi Garry,
>
>Suggestion: If you have TweakUI installed check Drives

to see if E has been

>unchecked.
>
>--
>All the Best,
>Kelly
>
>Microsoft-MVP Windows® XP
>2004 Windows MVP "Winny" Award
>
>Troubleshooting Windows XP
>http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com
>
>Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!
>http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm
>
>
>"Garry" <gmusgrave@conceptron.com> wrote in message
>news:f6fd01c43de7$db74ef70$a501280a@phx.gbl...

>>I noticed that a document I had open yesterday in WORD

was

>> no longer available. I tracked the problem to the fact
>> that the drive the document is on has suddenly changed

its

>> drive letter from "E:" to "G:".
>>
>> Odd, I thought, but no problem...I went into the

Computer

>> Management Console to change its drive letter back
>> to "E:", and it won't allow this -- there is no "E" in

the

>> dropdown list. Yet, no other drives are set to

drive "E".

>>
>> This drive had been set as drive "E:" for a long time,

and

>> no hardware changes have been made recently.
>>
>> Why would "E:" suddenly not be available, even though no
>> other drives are using it? How do I get drive "E:" back?
>>

>
>
>.
>