>
>Side note to Ian.  For changing the letters of Zip Drives,
>(part of the original intent), you can do that in Device Manager.
>I make my first Zip Drive "M" and it usually stays there unless
>I have a problem with the system and go into safe-mode.


When I first start up a system, I change the CD drive to W.  I then use X,
Y, and Z for future CD drives.  This is done in Start>Settings>Control
Panel>System>Device Manager>Go to Properties of the specific drive you are
interested in>Under Settings you will find Reserved Drive letters. I set
the start and end letter to be the same for a particular drive.  My plain
cdrom is: Start= W and End= W.

I started doing this in Win95 because the first time I added a hard drive,
it took over the letter D and forced my CD drive to E.  I found this to be
a problem because sometimes some/all of the previously installed software
would want to reference the CD for some reason and would look for it in the
D drive instead of where it now was in E.

I don't know if the this was the right/best solution, but it has worked for
me in Win95, Win98se, and WinMe.

A specific case: one hard drive with one partition, C
                   a cdrom, D
                   a cd burner, E
                   a dvd drive, F and
                   a Zip drive, G.
If you add a hard drive, it is going to be D.  and DEF and G are going to
All be shifted a letter higher.  If the new hard drive has multiple
partitions, say three of them, then the hard drive occupies DE and F and
the non hard drives get shifted three letters higher to GHI and J.

When the non hard drives use reserved drive letters out of the way of
future drive and partitions, then they are unaffected.

And if the C drive had one/some logical partitions then they are affected
by the addition of another hard drive too.  I don't know how dual boot
multiple partition drives are affected.

Tom



Thomas "Tom" Joseph Kelly Jr.  USN, Ret.
Christian, Husband, Father, Grandfather, and Great-Grandfather.
"God Bless America"

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