Blocked drive letter

External Since: Jan 31, 2007 Posts: 1

i got a new pc with preinstalled xp prof. sp2. as usual there was only one
big partition on the hdd. as i wanted to divide the partition, i installed
partition magic 8.01. before running it, i copied some files from the
network and therefore i mapped a shared folder to drive letter z.
then i seemed to make a mistake. i forgot to disconnect the network drive
and ran partition magic.
after the work was done, the system restarted. when i logged in, it claimed
to have found some new drives and the system should be rebooted in order to
use them.
obedient as i am, i rebooted it again. when i logged in, an icon appeared in
the systray claiming that it could not reconnect to the network drive, i
mapped before as drive z.
i started the explorer and clicked on the drive and truly there was no
connection. no problem i thought, let's disconnect and reconnect again. but
to my surprise i got an error when i tried to disconnect, stating that it
just is not possible!?!?
i rebootet again and since then the mapped drive disappeared from the
ecplorer, BUT from time to time an unassigned local drive appears
(unformatted) - can't be seen in the drivemanager!!! - and what bothers me
most at the moment, drive letter z is blocked (even if the 'ghost-drive'
does not show up).
i allready installed tweakui. there the drive letter is shown as 'in use'.
unchecking, rebooting, checking... again did not help either.
i could not find the slightest hint, where xp saves drive assignments and
ran out of ideas. has anyone any idea what to do (except reinstalling xp)?
thanks in advance,
Andy

External Since: Mar 12, 2004 Posts: 77

You might check under the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network\Z
If it was me, I'd just delete the Z key and reboot, but all of the
precautions about modifying the registry should be taken.
Louis

"Andy" <ap1.DeleteThis@inode.at> wrote in message
news:3ef34$45c0be01$557c39f5$32160@news.inode.at...
> i got a new pc with preinstalled xp prof. sp2. as usual there was only one
> big partition on the hdd. as i wanted to divide the partition, i installed
> partition magic 8.01. before running it, i copied some files from the
> network and therefore i mapped a shared folder to drive letter z.
> then i seemed to make a mistake. i forgot to disconnect the network drive
> and ran partition magic.
> after the work was done, the system restarted. when i logged in, it
claimed
> to have found some new drives and the system should be rebooted in order
to
> use them.
> obedient as i am, i rebooted it again. when i logged in, an icon appeared
in
> the systray claiming that it could not reconnect to the network drive, i
> mapped before as drive z.
> i started the explorer and clicked on the drive and truly there was no
> connection. no problem i thought, let's disconnect and reconnect again.
but
> to my surprise i got an error when i tried to disconnect, stating that it
> just is not possible!?!?
> i rebootet again and since then the mapped drive disappeared from the
> ecplorer, BUT from time to time an unassigned local drive appears
> (unformatted) - can't be seen in the drivemanager!!! - and what bothers me
> most at the moment, drive letter z is blocked (even if the 'ghost-drive'
> does not show up).
> i allready installed tweakui. there the drive letter is shown as 'in use'.
> unchecking, rebooting, checking... again did not help either.
> i could not find the slightest hint, where xp saves drive assignments and
> ran out of ideas. has anyone any idea what to do (except reinstalling xp)?
> thanks in advance,
> Andy
>
>