You may have a Microsoft® Windows® XP system which does not appear to work correctly when you insert a flash drive memory stick. Symptoms include:

• Some flash drives work and you see a drive letter in Windows Explorer, but other drives are not assigned a drive letter.
• The Safely Remove Hardware icon in the System Tray is present even when a flash drive is not given a drive letter (though no drive is listed).
• No flash drives are assigned a drive letter but the Safely Remove Hardware icon is visible in the system tray when a flash drive is connected.

In some cases you may find that, for instance, an RM MiniSafe flash memory stick is not given a drive letter by Windows®, but another type of memory stick is.

When a USB storage device is connected to a Windows® XP system, Windows® will install the device dynamically using generic USB mass storage device drivers. Once a drive volume is installed, the file system will attempt to mount the device and assign it a drive letter. If the device had previously been given a drive letter, it will be assigned the same drive letter again (if available). If the USB device has not been seen before, it will be assigned a new local drive letter which will be the first one above the last local drive letter starting from A: or C: (if available).

This drive letter assignment can fail under the following conditions:

• The user has insufficient access rights to mount a drive volume.
• The number of available drive letters has been restricted (eg, by a Group Policy)
• You have already connected one or more USB storage devices (eg, digital camera, USB CD drive, etc.) and have some network drives mapped.
• No local drive letters are available (eg, you have local drives C:, D:, E: and F: and network drives mapped to G:).
• The flash memory device was previously mounted as a drive letter which is now no longer available.

A typical scenario in the last case is that you had previously inserted an RM MiniSafe flash memory drive into a new system and it was assigned a drive letter by Windows® (eg, H:). Later you have connected the PC to a Domain or run a script which has mapped some network drives to various specific volume letters including H:. Now when you insert the RM MiniSafe, the MiniSafe cannot be assigned to H: because this is already taken by a network drive mapping. Microsoft® Windows® will not use a lower letter (eg, G:) even if it is available because it remembers that this drive was previously mapped to H:. Mapping it to a different letter could cause the user bad-path issues with pre-installed applications and shortcuts which already point to the H: volume. Microsoft® Windows® will not use a higher drive letter because it will not automatically map a local drive above a network drive.

Example Scenario:

Initial Drive assignment
A: Floppy
B: free
C: Hard Disk
D: Hard Disk
E: Hard Disk
F: CD-ROM
G: USB-DVD
H: RM MiniSafe

Drive assignment after reboot and mapping network drives
A: Floppy
B: free
C: Hard Disk
D: Hard Disk
E: Hard Disk
F: CD-ROM
G:
H: Network Drive mapped
I: Network Drive mapped
etc.

If the same RM MiniSafe is inserted, it will not be assigned a drive letter at all. However, if a different USB drive is inserted, it will be mounted as G:.

Note: Re-formatting the RM MiniSafe may appear to fix this issue because Microsoft® Windows® will not recognise the new Volume Serial number given to the drive by the reformat process and so Microsoft® Windows® will not remember the previous drive assignment.

Even though no drive letter has been assigned in Windows Explorer, you can manually change or assign a new drive letter as follows:

Note: You must have Administrator access privileges to the system.

1. From the Start menu, choose Settings, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management.
2. Click the Storage item in the right-hand panel.
3. Click the Disk Management item.
4. Right-click the storage volume that you wish to assign a drive letter to from within the lower right-hand window pane.
5. Click Change Drive Letter and Paths....
6. Use the Add, Change or Remove buttons as appropriate.
7. Click OK to save the settings.

Microsoft® have this issue documented:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297694

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925196