USB Mem sticks letter assignment - Win XP

[Paid_Peanuts]

Memory Sticks are not getting assigned a drive letter within Windows XP.

This is occuring on all machines, they have the following drives:

A: or B: which is assigned automatically regardless of wether the machine has a floppy or not.
C:
D: If the machine has a CD-ROM
E: If the machine has a second CD-ROM
F: Mapped network drive for network applications
H: Users home folder
M: SIMS mapped drive-staff / other hidden apps share-students
T: other hidden apps share
Y: Year drives mapped drive

Is there a way of forcing USB memory sticks to use a certain letter or letters in the case where 2 are used at the same time?

All machines are Windows XP running 2003 native AD setup.

Thanks in advance.

[Paid_Peanuts]

Sorry - forgot to mention the fact that we dont want to run round each 'machine' and manage 'my computer' and change the letter assignment is 'disk management' for every staff member and students that complain about this.

(We tell them to ditch their cd/rws and floppys for memory sticks then half of them can't use them :twisted: )

[mark]

USBDLM will do that for you - search on here for it.

Been using it a while here deployed via script to all out machines.

[AlexB]

No doubt on USBDLM, once you read a bit about it you can deploy the settings via registry and the msi using the gpo, thankfully another piece of software from your chair!

[Paid_Peanuts]

THANKS - no need for my feet to even leave the foot rest and hit the floor!

[markcuk]

I use diskpart to change the cd rom drive letter from d: to x or z and then the usb pens can use d:..works great just create a startup script.

mark

[mark]

Problem is tho' markcuk that USB drive letters can be auto assigned to mapped drives so the user doesn't see them, that's the beauty of USBDLM, you're in control of whet drive leters get assigned.

[markcuk]

no problem here they get it always on d: drive.we use ranger so that certain drive letters are available

mark

[box_l]

check my post on this page
http://edugeek.net/index.php?name=Fo...=7358&start=30

i edited the msi with orca to put in the registry keys for you.
this makes gpo deployment far easier.

regards

BoX

[garethedmondson]

Regarding this USBDLM software - does it do the job?

For some strange reason we are seeing CD/DVD rom drives missing on certain machines. When I look at their drive letter in Computer Management it is miles out of the allowed drive letters.

How easy is it would people say? I'm starting to read up about it now.

Any advice or hints would be welcome

Many thanks

Gareth

[Michael]

An alternative method would be to re-assign the mapped network drive F:\ as I:\ and this would then leave F:\ and G:\ free for memory sticks.

Simply modify your logon script, which'll take about 2 seconds and it's job done.

[Sirbendy]

USBDLM is an absolute doddle..copy to local disk, run install.bat..takes at most 30 secs.

I ran it on our "image base" machine, and now all machines get it on reimaging - saved us a hell of a headache.

[Gibbo]

I'd moved the mapped network drive to "P", that seems like a common letter usage.