XP Failing to Assign Drive Letters to USB Devices

Question

I have Windows XP MCE.  After having some unrelated problem, I performed a repair install.  Those problems are now fixed, but a new problem has appeared!  Whenever I connect a USB device which should be (and once used to be) given a drive letter, windows fails to give it a letter.  So far, this problem has occured when connecting an iPod and a card reader.  The same problem occurs when attempting to connect the iPod using firewire, the same problem occurs.   I can use disk manager to manually assign drive letters.  Upon doing so, I can access the devices (although I can only do so through the manager interface--not through My Computer).  However, when I next connect the devices, the drive letters have to be reassigned through disk manager again.   Why would windows fail to assign drive letters like this?  Can anyone think of a way to fix it apart from another repair installation?  Would a repair installation even be likely to fix it?   Thanks,   Robert Gerrity

mombodog · Answer

'After having some unrelated problem, I performed a repair install'   Did you do a windows update and get all the patches after the repair, it is required. You may have to do more than 1 windows update cycle to get them all, depending on what service pack level the CD was that you used to do the repair. Whenever you do a repair it will return the OS back to the service pack level of the CD you use, so if you used a SP1 xXP CD then you will have to apply SP2 again and then all the updates that were released after SP2.

RobertGerrity · Answer

Unfortunately it isn't that, I have already applied all the updates.

mombodog · Answer

Scroll down to 'problems under windows 2000'  Autorun may be your problem, use tweakUI to solve it.   http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html Message Edited by mombodog on 10-21-2006 08:07 PM

RobertGerrity · Answer

Using the Tweak UI didn't fix the problem, but I may install the software at that site--it sounds like it might take care of it.   The site you mentioned also says that for windows to correctly assign/remember drive letters, the USB device must have a serial number.  Because all of these devices used to work, I assume they have serial numbers, but it occurs to me that maybe Windows is no longer reading/storing/recognizing them properly.  Is there anyway to check this?

mombodog · Answer

Not that I am aware of, you might try doing a start run    sfc/ scannow   (space between / and scannow) this is the windows system file checker, it may want the install cd when run. Also check event viewer for errors related to your problem.

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