Whenever I plug the external enclosure into my laptop, it is no longer seen in "My Computer".
Other problems started earlier this week when Windows Xp started to label the hard drive with a different letter each time it was plugged in, restarting XP did not get rid of this problem. For about 4 months, the time I've had it, it would always turn on and boot up as the "F" drive. Recently it just decided to move down the alphabet line and re-label the drive.

I experimented with the External Enclosure and plugged it in and out, several times, and in different USB ports on the Laptop. Sometimes successfully XP would label the drive back to "F", which would be ideal since i saved libraries and links to into the F drive. BTW I have tried before under disk management to manually change the drive letter, but the letter "F" would not appear in the drop down list when it was labled otherwise. (ie. labled "I")

So today the drive labled it "Z". After I replugged it back in to try and get it back to "F", it is magically no where to be seen in the "My computer" area. I would like to know if anyone else has any idea whats going on, experience, or possibly how to have my ahrd drive comeback and stay as the drive letter "F'. Im running XP home edition, with all hardware updated to the fullest; no viruses or spyware.

I think XP still recognises its existence, as I can hear the USB plug and play sound when I connect it. My only other clue is
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4094/asdfasd0zk.jpg
No longer a drive letter, but some kinda random junk

and also i will try the external enclosure on another computer, although im confident it will work; i really want the scuffle on my laptop to be resolved

See http://computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/152647.html
for some info on this problem.

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so in other words, microsoft has a glitch in the "ntfs" hard drive settings?

Did you at any point in time introduce another USB device (camera, mp3 player) or anything else remotely related, to the system during the period or just prior to having this anomaly?

What about 'disk management' tasks like adding HDDs, manipulation partitions & stuff like that?

If the answer to the above is 100% negative, my bet is on the external enclosure being the problem and not XP.

"so in other words, microsoft has a glitch in the "ntfs" hard drive settings?"

That we don't know for sure, Keatharo. But it looks like it 'might' have something to do with the system making or changing drive letter assignments.

If you try a System Restore and/or a Repair install, it would help us if you would report back and let us know if it helped or not.

Actually, any kind of feedback at all will probably be helpful.

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Of this laptop, I have a sound blaster audigy 2 in the PCMCIA slot mostly all the time. I have four usb slots, which are occupied at different times since i travel. At the home station where the external enclosure is kept at bay, I plug in at the same time a mx510 mouse; and USB wireless transmitter to my Logitech S510 keyboard and remote. I dont have any mp3 players or cameras; neither any new devices that have been into my USB 2.0 ports.

As for the disk management tips, I'm a bit confused there on what you are suggesting. I do not want to create a partition. Heres an image if it helps any
http://img424.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled3fo1.jpg

-Ham30, yeah I've been running strong with system restore turned off on both drives. I guess it was very foolish, but my past experiences with system restore have proved invaluable...except maybe at a time like this. I will try a system repair with the windows xp disc and see what happens. If not, I was planning on reformatting my whole C drive later anyways as the last step... and the problem with that is that i still have some gigs of critical info to transfer over.... and no external enclosure working ha

Here's some more system info if you want

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 6/22/2006, 13:59:06
Machine name: .....
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: eMachine
System Model: Shadow-K8
BIOS: PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
Processor: Mobile AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz
Memory: 510MB RAM
Page File: 340MB used, 903MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

I'm sure everyone on the board thanks you for the feedback, Keatharo. It will be great news if the repair install works. That would be a relatively painless way for people to recover from this problem. If that doesn't work, I think we can be pretty certain that the System Restore would not have worked and that would be a real disaster.

This problem is good reason for people to back up their systems with a program like Ghost or Acronis. If you end of starting fresh, you might consider re-repartitioning, making a small OS partition and putting all your programs and data on another large partition. It makes for a small image backup. It also keeps a lot of your data from being lost if the OS goes belly up.

I have a 10gb partition (it's about half full) for XP and I put all the programs, My Desktop, My Documents, Favorites and Email on another drive.

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A thing that I didn't try was moving the drive from master to slave, or moving it to a different controller. My thought was that the change might cause the OS to rescan the drives and then detect it.

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"As for the disk management tips, I'm a bit confused there on what you are suggesting. I do not want to create a partition."

Ooops! You must have read that wrong, I was not suggesting or asking you to create or repartition your drive, instead I was asking IF YOU HAD DONE SO sometime around the time the problem started because stuff like that can affect drive letter assignment.

Hey Sabertooth, nope. No partition was ever made at any time. As for Ham30's technique of partitioning for safety, my external enclosure is really where everything that needs a backup goes; and the laptop hard drive just houses all the core programs and is disposable

As for the repair cd, I have tried with a Windows XP Pro CD handed out for free by my university (many pc programs are heavily discounted or for free at my college because its covered in high tuition); but during the process did not see the "R" repair function in the setup screen where you choose the windows platform. I have read that maybe this is some kinda OEM cd, so the Repair operation will have to wait until tonite when I can get my hands on another XP disc. I'll keep it this updated

I doubt if a Repair from an XP Pro CD would work on a XP Home system (If that's what you have). I don't think the OEM CDs have the Repair console. They normally do a format/reinstall.

If you are planning on borrowing a CD from a friend, You 'might' run into problems because the Product Code on the CD is different from the system. I'm not sure about that. Maybe someone else knows.

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I should mention something about doing the Repair Install. When you boot the CD you will initially get a 'repair' option. That's the Recovery Console, you don't want that. You want to select 'Install' and then you will get the second 'Repair' option, which is the one you want.

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Keatharo could you check something for me? Could you go to the Drive Manager, go through the actions to change the drive letter of one of your drives, but don't actually do it. Just see if the drive letter of the missing drive is available to use. I have a feeling it won't be there.

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That second sneaky repair option is AFAIK viable on every copy & variant of XP disc that is licensed by M$ regardless of the source (OEM, retail, VLK and so on).

However, I believe (from personal experience) that what sometimes makes it a hit or miss is its actuation routine. For example, an unattended default installation of XP will not offer a "repair install" option later down the road or if the need ever arose, same thing applies if the integrity of data or partitions on your drive is too corrupted and no prior intact Windows installation is found.

Secondly the PID anxiety with a 'borrowed XP disc' installation is a non-issue, it will work with your key, so long as the burrowed CD you plan on using is similar to your version (XP Pro to XP Pro or Home to Home).

Hmm yeah I believe I am doing the correct way to to refresh all the windows files, and not the Recovery Console as Ham30 commented on.

I did the disk managements steps again, and again as you predicted right, the drop down box is completey empty with no letters to choose from. doh

And for Sabertooth's last comment, crap. I'll need to snoop around some more for an XP home cd. I seem to have a good amount of XP pro cd's though that I am going to try now

Holy Cow, I didn't expect it to be empty of 'all' letters to choose from. That's not good news at all. I sure hope the Repair works.

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Hey, the good news is that I have fixed this problem. The bad news is that it was my fault all along.

I was checking my emails this morning (could not get the XP home disc last nite) when I saw I had a reply from a support tech. In the past two weeks I have installed "Lock My Folder", a program that does what it says, and I passworded two folders on my external. The email said that the programmer guy who wrote the Lock My Folder program has just coded a .exe fix for XP Home edition and attached it to my email. I ran the fix (less then 1 mb), and plugged back in my external enclosure. Not excited yet, the external enclosue still didnt show up in my computer; but when I went to disk management ALL the letters appeared in the drop down box including F. I was then able to set the drive letter and once again see my external enclosure in my computer.

So I guess I'll sum this up and say that a third party program screwed things up for me. I had thought it was "Lock My folder" programs fault (although it works very well to lock things), but stopped the pursuit after I had uninstalled this program when my external enclosure got weird. More specifically the fix the programmer sent me was for XP home edition also stated in the support email that this third party program was although compatabile with XP pro and home, it was primarily written more for XP Pro use.

I can send anyone the .exe fix, it ran and fixed my problems even though I had Lock My Folder uninstalled.

Thanks to everyone who helped and replied in this enduring process, and for Ham30's reference it was a software problem for me. Even after uninstalling a program and running registry cleanup/fixes, the real fix was from a specific program code. I hope other people are lucky enough as me to find that specific fix, maybe the XP repair disc would of solved my problems- but this .exe fix was much faster :)

That's really neat, Keatharo. But it wasn't your fault. I wasn't using 'Lock My Folder' and I doubt if many of the other people who have encountered this problem were either. I'm pretty well convinced it's a windows bug, brought on by a combination of circumstances.

It would be great if we can make that fix available to everyone on the board. If you would send it to www.yousendit.com and put the download address here, that would be one way. Or if you would rather email the file to me, then I'll make it available on yousendit.

My email address is papa_70 (at) verizon.net
Replace the ' (at) ' with '@' of course.

You're a hero Keatharo, and I want to say thank you very much for your help on this problem. You are going to save a lot of people grief in the coming days for coming up with a fix.

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Heres the yousendit link. Please be aware and use at your own risk, this is a fix to the "Lock My Folder" program. It may do nothing or something no any kinda of computer
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=48CA1A227E440746

I am 99% sure that my problem was caused from "Lock my folder". I re-installed the program and fixes again, so I could lock some folders on the 200 gig maxtor. And behold again that the drive letter crap renaming started to happen again. I uninstalled the program, and just installed the fix (as posted above). Then I restarted the computer and everything acted normal again, got my "F" drive back no matter how many times i unplug and replug/ power down the external enclosure

This is additional information that may help anyone else. I ordered my case at xpcgear
http://www.xpcgear.com/blueenclosure.html
That is my 3'5 enclosure, but mines is black ( black no longer available). It uses the cypress chipset.

"I am 99% sure that my problem was caused from "Lock my folder"."

Yup, you I think you have proved that. I guess the fix for your problem 'might' be only applicable to 'Lock My Folder' users and may not work for some of the other missing drive failures.

Since you had uninstalled 'Lockmyfolder' and then ran the fix, it would seem that the fix made a correction to the Registry. If that's the case, a simple System Restore should theoretically fix the problem, because it will restore the Registry to the way it was at the System Restore point.

Anyway, I have downloaded the file keatharo. Thanks very much for it and for all your input! I for one, have learned a lot from the info you provided.

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For what it's worth, I ran the fix on my system (XP Home SP2) to see if it did any harm. It doesn't seem to have hurt anything. I ran a few applications, rebooted and then ran a few more. Everything looks OK.

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can you please repost the fix? i'm having the same problem but the yousendit has expired. my email is imagine285 at yahoo.com

Could I possibly have a copy of the exe to fix the Lock my folder program? xhail13@yahoo.com

Thank you!