>At 08:08 AM 9/10/98 , Brad Loomis wrote:
>Hi,
>What I would like to know is how to set the drive letter for my CD-ROM
>before I install Win95. After fdisk and format and installing drivers, it
>defaults to "D". I would like to change that in DOS to X or Z so all CD's
>will be directed to that letter rather than the default D. I tried various
>forms of the /l switch, but I guess I don't know the right way to do this. I
>can do in Device Manager after installing Win95, but I would like to do
>prior to that point.
>Brad.

>On Thursday, September 10, 1998 11:15 AM Bob Wright wrote:

>You can set your CD drivers in the autoexec.bat to designate your CD
>rom as any letter you wish, such as "Z", as follows:

>c:\windows\command\mscdex.exe /D:MSCD001  /L:Z

>The problem you may be finding is when Win95 loads beyond the
>autoexec.bat it will unload the MSCDEX driver in the autoexec.bat
>and reload it's own MSCDEX driver,  even if it is the same driver
>from the same directory.

>So...  this MSCDEX driver loaded in the autoexec.bat file will only work
>for you in DOS and not if you load windows.  If you wish the same drive
>letter in Win95, you must use the device manager to set it.
>Bob Wright

Bob and Brad,
There is a further development in Win95B, (or OSR2 if you prefer).
While the mscdex.exe line in autoexec.bat does get remarked out
during installation, Win95B preserves the drive letter in device manager
if one was specified using the /L switch.  This is a good thing, because
whenever you browse under a hardware install wizard it suggests the
drive letter you used for the cdrom when you first installed Win95.

At least one useful instance of mscdex in autoexec.bat is to keep cdrom
drives from overlaping on assigned network drives.  I use D: for a network share
every pc uses, so the cdroms start at R: just to keep them out of the
way.  Under win95B, the cdrom shows up as the letter you used in
autoexec.bat, which is convenient when you have to run those wizards
again.  This also works in win95.00 if you take out the rem at the beginning
of the mscdex command after windows installation is completed.
As for "needing" the drive in MSDOS, I normally would prefer
using either c:\windows\dosstart.bat for the placement of the mscdex.exe
command, which executes everytime you use start, shut down, restart in
DOS mode. Or I use a desktop msdos prompt icon's properties, program,
advanced, set the msdos mode on, and configure a specific config.sys and
autoexec.bat for the DOS session.  The only time this trips me up is when
I press F8 during a warm boot to get the boot menu so i can boot straight
to dos, because the cdrom doesn't load in this case.
Tom Turak

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