Card reader with networked drives

I'm having a problem with two different media card readers. I'm
working in an environment with several networked drives, starting with
H: The media card readers I'm trying to work with typically show up as
four drives. In this environment, running XP, only the first two
drives show up, as F: and G: There are MANY drives available, yet they
are spread out through my networked drive letters. H, I, j, P, S, T,
and W are used, but K through N, Q, R, U, V, X, Y, and Z are still
available. Windows XP will not allocate a drive letter to the
remaining two card slots in the card reader. If I disconnect from my
networked H drive, then XP automatically maps H to the next slot in my
card reader. Is there a fix for this? In Win2k, the drives would
automatically allocate in between the networked drives. My card reader
would take drives F, G, K, and N. In Windows XP, it seems that once
Windows sees a networked drive, it cuts of drive letter allocation
altogether. In the Disk Manager, the drives show up as being allocated
to the existing networked drives, specifically the two drives I cannot
see from the card reader are showing as drives H and I, but since
they're already in use by the network, the networked drive takes
precedence. Does anyone know a fix for this problem?

I can manually map the drives to unused drives through the disk
manager, but I have end users that aren't able to accomplish this, and
they will be having the same issue.

Left to it's own devices Windows assigns Local drive letters A-Z and
network drive letters Z-A. If you assign letters yourself, you get to
manage them yourself.

wrote:

I'm having a problem with two different media card readers. I'm
working in an environment with several networked drives, starting with
H: The media card readers I'm trying to work with typically show up as
four drives. In this environment, running XP, only the first two
drives show up, as F: and G: There are MANY drives available, yet they
are spread out through my networked drive letters. H, I, j, P, S, T,
and W are used, but K through N, Q, R, U, V, X, Y, and Z are still
available. Windows XP will not allocate a drive letter to the
remaining two card slots in the card reader. If I disconnect from my
networked H drive, then XP automatically maps H to the next slot in my
card reader. Is there a fix for this? In Win2k, the drives would
automatically allocate in between the networked drives. My card reader
would take drives F, G, K, and N. In Windows XP, it seems that once
Windows sees a networked drive, it cuts of drive letter allocation
altogether. In the Disk Manager, the drives show up as being allocated
to the existing networked drives, specifically the two drives I cannot
see from the card reader are showing as drives H and I, but since
they're already in use by the network, the networked drive takes
precedence. Does anyone know a fix for this problem?

I can manually map the drives to unused drives through the disk
manager, but I have end users that aren't able to accomplish this, and
they will be having the same issue.

That's the thing, though. Windows won't manage them itself in this
instance. It tries to map to an already mapped drive. My H drive is a
networked drive, but when I go into the disk manager, it shows one of
my card reader's drives as H. When I open the H drive, it's my
networked drive. If I disconnect the networked H drive, the missing
card reader drive instantly shows up as H in the removable storage
section.

Bob I wrote:
Left to it's own devices Windows assigns Local drive letters A-Z and
network drive letters Z-A. If you assign letters yourself, you get to
manage them yourself.

Shazbat wrote:
That's the thing, though. Windows won't manage them itself in this
instance. It tries to map to an already mapped drive. My H drive is
a networked drive, but when I go into the disk manager, it shows one
of my card reader's drives as H. When I open the H drive, it's my
networked drive. If I disconnect the networked H drive, the missing
card reader drive instantly shows up as H in the removable storage
section.

Bob I wrote:
Left to it's own devices Windows assigns Local drive letters A-Z and
network drive letters Z-A. If you assign letters yourself, you get
to manage them yourself.

Disconnect the network drives then run the disk management console and
change the drive letters of the card readers. Start==Run==diskmgmt.msc

--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca/forum/Forum.htm