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Vista Explorer won't remove Drive Icons when Drives Dismounted

Discussion in 'Windows Vista' started by phillfri, Nov 24, 2008.

  1. phillfri

    phillfri Guest

    My Vista Explorer won't remove drive icons once a drive has been
    dismounted. Even if I physically remove a drive from the machine, Vista
    Explorer just turns the pre-existing drive icon into an "Other" category
    icon, placing a question mark on it and retaining the drive letter
    allocation, thus precluding any other device from being assigned that
    drive letter.

    It does something very similar with external USB drives. If you plug in
    a external USB drive and assign it a letter like "X:", which I do with
    my USB drives so they stay the same letter when I move them from machine
    to machine, the Vista Explorer will never give up that drive letter
    again.

    I think Vista Explorer is buggy when it comes to handling USB drive
    labels. It seems to remember drive labels and allocates a drive letter
    to each drive label, and subsequently refuses to release that drive
    letter for use by any other device, even if the drive is subsequently
    dismounted - and there is no way to delete that drive label/drive letter
    allocation.

    This is an absolute nightmare if you use a lot of different USB storage
    devices. You can actually end up with multiple drive letter assignments
    to the same hard drive device. I don't know how, but I've also got two
    different drive letters allocated to my internal data drive (C: is
    Vista, D: is XP and E: is Data).

    I would add that Vista Computer Management show the hard drives
    correctly. And this is strictly a Vista Explorer issue. I have XP on
    this machine also and the XP Explorer is fine, showing all the drives
    exactly as they should be. Its obviously not a hardware issue.

    I've Googled this too death and found nothing. Does anyone know how to
    fix this?


    --
    phillfri
    Posted via
     
  2. bizvits

    bizvits Guest

    Ditto - same problem. Started when connecting a linux formatted drive to
    my Vista 64 machine. Used a utility to assign drive letters etc, now
    having since removed the hardware and uninstalled the utility, drive
    letters persist.. with question marks on them. Driving me mad - ha
    no-one had this problem (other than PhillFri?)... please help!

    phillfri;1083995 Wrote: <!--coloro:blue--><span style="color:blue <!--/coloro-->
    > My Vista Explorer won't remove drive icons once a drive has been
    > dismounted. Even if I physically remove a drive from the machine, Vista
    > Explorer just turns the pre-existing drive icon into an "Other" category
    > icon, placing a question mark on it and retaining the drive letter
    > allocation, thus precluding any other device from being assigned that
    > drive letter.
    >
    > It does something very similar with external USB drives. If you plug in
    > a external USB drive and assign it a letter like "X:", which I do with
    > my USB drives so they stay the same letter when I move them from machine
    > to machine, the Vista Explorer will never give up that drive letter
    > again.
    >
    > I think Vista Explorer is buggy when it comes to handling USB drive
    > labels. It seems to remember drive labels and allocates a drive letter
    > to each drive label, and subsequently refuses to release that drive
    > letter for use by any other device, even if the drive is subsequently
    > dismounted - and there is no way to delete that drive label/drive letter
    > allocation.
    >
    > This is an absolute nightmare if you use a lot of different USB storage
    > devices. You can actually end up with multiple drive letter assignments
    > to the same hard drive device. I don't know how, but I've also got two
    > different drive letters allocated to my internal data drive (C: is
    > Vista, D: is XP and E: is Data).
    >
    > I would add that Vista Computer Management show the hard drives
    > correctly. And this is strictly a Vista Explorer issue. I have XP on
    > this machine also and the XP Explorer is fine, showing all the drives
    > exactly as they should be. Its obviously not a hardware issue.
    >
    > I've Googled this too death and found nothing. Does anyone know how to
    > fix this?<!--colorc--><!--/colorc-->


    --
    bizvits
    Posted via
     
  3. phillfri

    phillfri Guest

    My situation was the same - it was that pesky Linux hard disk interface
    driver (Ext2 IFS if I recall). In my case, once I removed the driver I
    was able to clean things up. If I recall correctly, after uninstalling
    the driver I went into my hard drive manager and made sure no drives
    were manually assigned drive letters. Then after a reboot Vista
    defaulted to its automatic drive assignment procedure.

    bizvits;1359004 Wrote: <!--coloro:blue--><span style="color:blue <!--/coloro-->
    > Ditto - same problem. Started when connecting a linux formatted drive to
    > my Vista 64 machine. Used a utility to assign drive letters etc, now
    > having since removed the hardware and uninstalled the utility, drive
    > letters persist.. with question marks on them. Driving me mad - ha
    > no-one had this problem (other than PhillFri?)... please help!<!--colorc--><!--/colorc-->


    --
    phillfri
    Posted via
     

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