Change the letter of external floppy drive?

[Raziel]

Here are the facts:
I put no floppy drive in my computer when I built it.
I forgot my admin password.
I downloaded a program to recover the password.
The program requires a floppy disk.
I plug my external floppy disk drive in.
The batch program is set to execute on the A: drive.
My external floppy disk drive is the B: drive.
There is nothing in the A: drive.
My USB floppy disk drive will not show up on the disk management scren.

Is there some way I can change the letter of my external floppy drive? I have no cds here, so I can't download that version of the program.

[Squashman]

See if you can disable the floppy device in your bios. Even though you don't have a floppy drive internally, the controller is still there so the bios and operating system reserver A: for the drive letter. You might be able to disable the floppy drive in the bios but I doubt it. See if you can use the subst command I doubt that will work if you are booting from a boot disk though.
subst a: b:

[Tumbleweed36]

Hi,

No promises, but give this a try.....

Leave the drive plugged in, shut down and then boot up

Click START

Right click MY COMPUTER

Select MANAGE

STORAGE

DISK MANAGEMENT

right click on CHANGE DRIVE LETTER

Then change it to what you want it to be. (if that letter is already being used, move the other drive away to a higher letter and then move it to what you want to be on that letter.

When you are done in there, shut down and reboot and it should recognize the way you want it......................well, maybe.

You see, some of these external drives can be tricky, so it is important that you plug it in as if permanent, change the letter, and then leave it in until you reboot and if you don't unplug, should stay the same.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

[Squashman]

Originally Posted by Tumbleweed36

Hi,

No promises, but give this a try.....

Leave the drive plugged in, shut down and then boot up

Click START

Right click MY COMPUTER

Select MANAGE

STORAGE

DISK MANAGEMENT

right click on CHANGE DRIVE LETTER

Then change it to what you want it to be. (if that letter is already being used, move the other drive away to a higher letter and then move it to what you want to be on that letter.

When you are done in there, shut down and reboot and it should recognize the way you want it......................well, maybe.

You see, some of these external drives can be tricky, so it is important that you plug it in as if permanent, change the letter, and then leave it in until you reboot and if you don't unplug, should stay the same.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Floppy drives do not display in disk management.

[Tumbleweed36]

Hi,

I know the internals do not, but wouldn't the external show? I am just not sure, but I thought it might since it was not connected like the internal.

[Squashman]

Originally Posted by Raziel

My USB floppy disk drive will not show up on the disk management scren.

[Tumbleweed36]

Thanks Squashman,

How the heck could I have missed that statement by Raziel. I stand corrected on that one, just missed that statement when I read the post.

Guess it is getting too late in the evening for me since I didn't do a good job of reading. All my USB drive devices (don't have a floppy USB) show up in disk management so thought there might be a slim chance on that one. Have a great evening.

[ReeKorl]

Raziel,

You should be able to modify the batch program. Open it in notepad (or your chouce of editor) and change any reference of A: to B:. Hopefully, this will allow the program to run on the B drive instead.

Another method I've just thought of is tricking the drive into being the A drive. I'm not sure if this works on external drives, but with internal drives running on A, you can go to a command prompt and type B: and the computer starts working with B: instead of A:. Try this with yours and type A: - it might start running as A: (temporarily).

-EDIT

Scratch that last idea, I've just tried it and it seems to have been taken out in XP. Yet another useful 'feature' that's been taken out.

[Cold Wind]

I had a similar problem. I removed the Floppy that I originally installed in my case when I built it - and replaced it with a Combo front panel USB2.0/Firewire card thinking I would never need a floppy again. I ran across a couple instances where I decided I would need a floppy drive to service customers in the field with older machines. I obtained a TEAC external USB Floppy drive and installed it. However, it would show up in Windows Explorer as Drive "B" and that really drove me nuts, I had to fix that and make it drive "A".

In Explorer I was showing drive "A" & also Drive "B" with only drive "B" as the working drive.

Here's my solution:

Step 1: Regedit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

right pane found: \DosDevices\A:
I right clicked this Binary entry & renamed the drive letter to "M" (To be sure I was not interfering with any active drive letters) So it now was: \DosDevices\M:

Next in the same right pane found: \DosDevices\B:
I right clicked on the entry and renamed it: \DosDevices\A:

Next I renamed the Original "A:" (Now "M:") to "B:" (Using the same method as above)

Step 2: Device Manager

Next I went into device manager (Win Key+Pause Break>Hardware>Device Manager) and Found the entry for "floppy disk drives" I expanded the selection (Click on Plus key) and right clicked on both entries (Floppy Disk Drive and TEAC Model #) and chose "Uninstall" - next, realizing the drive is USB interface I also went down to "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" and found an entry for TEAC USB Floppy Drive and like before right clicked on the entry and chose unistall from the context menu.

Next in Device manager I went to the top level (Computer Name) and right clicked on it and chose "Scan for hardware changes", Windows then found the USB Floppy drive and installed the appropriate drivers.

When it finished I closed all open windows & inserted a floppy disk with something on it into my floppy drive and returned to Windows Explorer and found that I still had two Floppy drives showing (A & B) - only this time when I clicked on the "A:" drive it was reading from my USB Floppy and showing me the files on it. (Partial Success!)

Step 3: Important - Reboot and enter BIOS Settings immediately or this is all for not.

Enter BIOS - on my machine, the DEL key.
Find the entry for floppy drive and disable it.
Reason being, is that the USB Floppy drive is being seen by Windows as a USB Device, not a normal Floppy drive that is connected to the main board with a ribbon cable.

Save your settings and reboot.

Whala! enter Windows Explorer and you will see that you only have one Floppy drive listed (Drive A:) and if you still have your disk in the floppy and click on Drive Letter A: it will show the files contained on it.