Keep Your CD-ROM Drive in One Place


Q: Repartitioning my hard drive causes my CD-ROM drive to change its drive letter. Is there some way I can give the CD player a fixed letter from the start that won't change?

Joe Grabowski

A: To give your CD-ROM drive an unchanging drive letter, right-click My Computer and select Properties. Click the Device Manager tab. In the resulting list of peripherals, double-click CDROM. Below it will appear a description of your particular CD-ROM drive. Double-click that to bring up your CD-ROM drive's properties. Click the Settings tab.

In the 'Reserved drive letters' box, change both the 'Start drive letter' and 'End drive letter' options to your choice of a permanent letter. This letter should be late enough in the alphabet that it won't interfere with Windows' method of naming hard drive partitions; you can consider anything after J: as bound to be safe. Click OK when you're done.

-Lincoln Spector


Category:Windows 9x
Issue: September 2000

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