Reassigning hard drive letters

Wow, that was a lot of responses. Will try to answer all...

@mitchell65 no, I haven't, mostly tried E and F, as they were on XP on this same machine yesterday. Will try that, but I suspect it won't make a massive difference.

@fishnbanjo sorry, should have made it clear, these are both internal SATA2 drives.

@sygnus21 manually assigning letters works fine, on either or both drives, and i can then access them through My computer. After reboot though, they lose their assignation, whatever I try.

@wishmaster I'm fairly sure this isn't correct. However, assigned in the order you said, still didnt work.

@whs Yes, it wasnt working, when neither partition was 'active', so I turned it on. Sadly you cant turn off active. Should I wipe the MBR on that drive?

@sygnus21 and @whs will try both your solutions and get back to you.

Thanks!
Chris

Ok, so I got into regedit, and it tells me this:


Basically, the main difference is that there is a Q drive. Forgot to mention that My computer can see a Q: drive too, but its "not accessible, access is denied".

Is there a free partitioning tool I can use to completely wipe this drive and start again on it? I already have both partitions backed up on Hard Drive 1, so I am willing to do this...

Bless,
Chris

Okay, I'm using partition magic to completely wipe the hard drive. Then I will make one partition, and see if Windows can recognise it each time.

I think that's working. Just created partitions, and they stayed on reboot.

I *think* the Q drive is due to installing Office 2010 beta, meaning that everything is now working fine, I think!

Thanks for your help guys!

bigonroad said:

I think that's working. Just created partitions, and they stayed on reboot.

I *think* the Q drive is due to installing Office 2010 beta, meaning that everything is now working fine, I think!

Thanks for your help guys!

That is correct. Office 2010 creates a virtual drive (usually Q) for the installer. When you mount images of some imaging programs (e.g. Paragon, Macrium), you get virtual drives too. They disappear with the next reboot.

edward chan said:

I have the exact same problem as thread starter. Without any manual assignment the print screen shows that E is mounted but I would not be able to see it. The drive in question is a 2tb sata2 externally connected via usb

I did not mount any office application on my newly bought computer

Any fresh help appreciated

Would be easier if you posted a screenshot of your Disk Management.