Drive letter oddity

I've seen a number of drive letter issues here and on the various
forums on Windows, but none, I think, that fit my problem. So I'm
afraid this is rather long ;-)

My PC is Win XP Home, with C: (root drive), D: (DVD-ROM) and E: (DVD
burner) installed "in the case", i.e. fixed.

I also keep data on three WD USB connected external hard drives, which
I plug in as and when required. Occasionally I also plug into a USB
port a 4-slot card reader.

Until yesterday, I could plug and unplug any of these, and, when
unplugged, the drive letters they had been assigned would be released
automatically for further use. For example, if I plugged in one drive,
it would be assigned as Drive F and, when unplugged, F would be
released so that if I plugged either in that drive or any other it
would still be drive F.

The first hint of trouble was shown in VCOM's PD Explorer, where it
showed drive F still existing after it had been removed, although
obviously it couldn't access it. OTOH Windows Explorer showed the
drive as having been removed so I assumed it was some glitch in PD
Explorer (but that had never given trouble before).

So the "re plugged" drive now showed as G, so a simple trip to Drive
Management would soon fix that! Er, No. F was no longer available in
Drive Manager, and Tweak UI showed the letter as "occupied" (i.e. no
question mark).

I then discovered that if I plugged any other drive in (including the
card reader) then, after removal, the first available drive letter had
incremented by one.

Thankfully, rebooting restored all available letters but why the
change in behaviour?

Just before I noticed this, I had done four things:

Installed the latest Windows updates;

Installed an upgrade to PC Tools "Spyware Doctor";

Disconnected an ADSL modem from its USB port;

Attached a Linksys router to the Ethernet port and configured it
(works perfectly - no network drives used).

So, not a total disaster (just inconvenient to have to reboot), but
what has happened? Can anyone help with this?


Kind regards


--
John Gruffydd (Mold, Wales, UK)
.

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