We have been saying this on the list for several years.
You can either force the drive to an "extended drive letter" with
a switch in the (DOS) configuration files before an install of the OS,
or do a repair of the Registry to re-assign the Windows install location.
(If not, this will bite you later...)

I commonly use "R" for plain read-only CD Rom drives, and "W"
for writers... It still allows other drives to place themselves where
necessary, and avoids the "Z" and virtual drive question entirely...

The only bad part of this is that after a problem, (possibly being
forced into Safe-mode), the CD drives will revert to "DOS (or BIOS)
drive rules" and will need to be re-assigned to "R" and"W"...
There is something "special" about SafeMode (sometimes) where
it will changes lots of settings back to their defaults even after the
system is booting normally again...  This is one of it's many features.
                YMMV...

                         Rick Glazier

From: "A&C Thompson" <[log in to unmask]>
> Hopefully not going to sidetrack this thread, but if 'Z' is used for CD-ROM, what letter does
> virtual drive take when required? (Do XP or 2K use virtual drives?)...not important, just curious...

> From: "Douglas Simmons"
> > first thing I do is to change the CDROM drive letter to
> > "Z".  That way the CDROM drive letter will not change as
> > new drives are added or partitions changed.

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