Change cdrom drive letter in XP Pro

[cruiser78]

How do I change the drive letter for a cd-rom? I'm sure I've done it before... but I can't remember how to do it.
Win XP Pro

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Go to the administrative tools in the start menu & click computer management. Then storage/disk management. Right click on the drive you want to change.

 

[djwhite]

Go into the administrative tools, computer management, disk management, right click on the drive and select change drive letter and paths, then click change.

 

[djwhite]

damn, beat me to it.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

 

[cruiser78]

nope.. i tried that b4 i posted... you can only change the hard drive/partition lettering there... for the cdroms it just tells you what drive it is and doesn't give any option anywhere to change it. I think i might have found how to change it in the registry. I just need to reboot and then I'll post my results here.

 

[cruiser78]

Yep, I did find it in the registry.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices... there you will see a bunch of binary values named \DosDevices\Z: (Z: is the drive letter of the drive) just change the letter of the drive you want, reboot (logging off might work too... i didn't try that) and the drive letter is changed.

 

[Arthurking]

User Tips > Tips Archive

Change Drive Letters in Windows XP



Posted: April 08, 2002




Submitted by Doug Knox, Microsoft MVP, Tewksbury, Massachusetts

"When you add drives to your computer, such as an extra hard drive, a CD drive, or a storage device that corresponds to a drive, Windows automatically assigns letters to the drives. However, this assignment might not suit your system; for example, you might have mapped a network drive to the same letter that Windows assigns to a new drive. When you want to change drive letters, follow these steps:

Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
Under Computer Management, click Disk Management. In the right pane, you’ll see your drives listed. CD-ROM drives are listed at the bottom of the pane.
Right-click the drive or device you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Click Change, click Assign the following drive letter, click the drive letter you want to assign, and then click OK.
You will not be able to change the boot or system drive letter in this manner. Many MS-DOS-based and Windows-based programs make references to a specific drive letter (for example, environment variables). If you modify the drive letter, these programs may not function correctly. "


This tip worked for me, don't why your system wouldn't allow it ?

 

[cruiser78]

Doh! I forgot to scroll down in the drive listing under disk management... o well... i figured out how to do it through the registry so I still learned something else too

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Scolling is a magical thing.

 

[cruiser78]

LOL... yep