Solved: Drive letters cannot be assigned to flash / USB drives under Windows XP

OMG DUDE I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!

Its back working, I appreciate everyone’s help Thank you for taking the time and helping

Ditto .

Aiya! Careful with that registry!

I've got the same problem with my thumb drives not showing up in Windows Explorer so I was really excited when I saw your post. I saved the registry folders that you said to back up but after I destroyed my registry, XP wouldn't boot and I didn't know how to restore them. So I booted in safe mode and restored a Restore Point. That got the registry restored and XP booting again. I probably should have been more cautious but I deleted all the \??\Volume entries and a lot of the ones below those like (ie \dosdevices\C. I really hope I can figure out how to tailor your fix to my machine and get the auto-drive assignment working again.

Moral of the story: Don't delete registry entries unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing.

It worked for me!

Thanks for this solution. I'm not sure what went awry with my system, but I suspect it had something to do with a new version of McAfee that I installed a couple weeks back. It was called McAfee Plus. I'm using XP Media Edition on my HP Pavilion. It was a replacement to the previous online version of McAfee. After installing it my operating system started going stupid. I ended up having to do a system repair. It seemed to work OK for a couple days then started going stupid again.

I found out that McAfee has crappy support options - some dumb online chat thing that makes you type forever and a support line that is a pay per minute 900 number. I'm not paying to debug any company's software! I uninstalled, ran their cleanup utility and demanded a refund.

I got a call a couple days later to do a survey. Too bad they spend more time doing survey's than they do supporting the customer. They can do all the survey's they want now. I'm not paying to install crap.

As for HP, I spent about 3 hours working on this problem with them (three different support people) and they ended by telling me that I'd have to do a clean install. NO WAY! Another couple hours of research and I stumbled across this one and it worked. Thanks folks.

thanks so much!!! i have been having the same problem for months and your instruction with the registry fixed everything!!! i thought reformatting was the only way to repair it to how it used to be but now its working perfectly!! thanks so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Same here! The clear instructions were greatly appreciated.

No MountedDevice1

I don't have a MountedDevice1 folder in my registry just a MountedDevice folder. I tried removing the DOS files from this but it didn't help. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I solved this problem another way round. Deleting the upperfilter I see more like a workaround. I think the upperfilter is there for a reason. Btw I don't think you have to delete the MountedDevice thing. The Bluemouse (workaround) works fine for me just deleting the upperfilter. Take a copy of the key (or better of the whole registry) before you do anything. Don't mess with the registry if you don't know what you are doing. After you have deleted the upperfilter do a reboot. After the reboot Windows should tell you it has installed some hardware and want's to reboot. Do that and you should be good. Works for me. Now, here's what I did instead of deleting the upperfilter. I found out the file SPTD.SYS in C:\windows\system32\drivers (XP) was the reason for bad behaviour. The SPTD.SYS and SPTDxxx.SYS belongs to Daemon Tools. The xxx are some numbers. So, by uninstalling Daemon Tools and rebooting, same thing happend. After reboot windows installed some hardware and after a new reboot everything was ok. If you have Daemon Tools installed, to figure out if thats the reason, move the two files mentioned above to an empty folder. Do a reboot. After the reboot windows should install some hardware. If you can see your Flash Drive after a new reboot you know the reason. I don't know who's to blame. The Daemon Tools or the Flash Drive. But there have been some problems with SPTD.SYS over time. Another thing. After doing it, no matter what solution you use, take a look at your drive letters. They maybe changed. Remap them back to where they were from the start. Sorry for my bad english.

Peace
Cheers

Thanks Bluemouse

Happened to me after a "less than smoothe" SP2 installation.
Your fix worked instantly.

I keep getting an "insert disk" error on booting but I can live with that.

brainer, that probably has to do more with your boot options than with the hd. maybe you have it set to boot off usb or cd before hard drive. Check your bios settings.

here's a screen shot showing the discontiguous mapping letters that work
for me -- they even get retained across boots.

the USB devices will get mapped (for me) as E:\ F:\ when attached

Not following Whats your issue again?

Entries in UpperFilters key were the cause on my system

Bluemouse's fix resolved the issue for me and I am extremely grateful to you as I had previously spent countless hours looking for a fix for this issue and your fix was the only one that worked.

I do have some comments that may be helpful to others with this issue as follows:

My machine is running Windows XP SP2 (and it was upgraded to SP2 but I don't think that is relevent to this issue). My issue was exactly as Bluemouse stated in the beginning, however, in addition, I had discovered that when I did manually assign a drive letter to the partition on the usb flashdrive, even though it was not seen in My Computer or Windows Explorer, the data on the Flashdrive could be accessed by drive letter from a command prompt. Of course, after the machine was rebooted, the drive letter went away again.

Below are some differences that I encountered on Bluemouse's fix (at least on my system):

On step 3, there was no MountedDevice1 folder, only a folder called MountedDevices. I performed step 4 on the MountedDevices folder on my machine.

On step 8, the key was called UpperFilters

----- I think deleting the UpperFilters key in step 8 was what did it on my system as I originally deleted the UpperFilters registry key as per Bluemouse's instruction and the issue was resolved. I then ran the reg file I had saved previously to put the UpperFilters registry key back because I was not sure what it did. I then experimented further and was able to narrow down the specific cause and fix the issue while still keeping the UpperFilters key in my registry ----- Here are my notes:

There were three values in the UpperFilters key in the registry on my machine as follows (and this was the order they were originally in):

snapman
PartMgr
Phylock

I found that snapman (which is a service used with Acronis True Image) was causing the issue and to be more exact, it was not that it was one of the values in the UpperFilters registry key, but rather that it was first in the list. By having snapman last in the list, I could still use that service but it did not cause any drive letter assignment issues.

This is the order they are in now and all is working well:

PartMgr
Phylock
snapman

Important Note: If you plan to leave the UpperFilters key in your registry (rather than deleting it) ,then at a minumum it needs to have the value PartMgr in it, as that value is for the Windows XP "Partition Manager Driver" (partmgr.sys) which Windows XP uses to assign drive letters to partitions.

BTW... I did try putting Phylock (is used by another imaging program called Image for Windows) first, then PartMgr, then snapman, and there were no issues, so the issue only occurred if snapman was prior to PartMgr.

MANY THANKS Redwin!

First of all, HELLO TO EVERYBODY of this GREAT community!

This is my first post here.

GREAT, Redwin!

My problem is exactly the same posted by Bluemouse and added by JohnMart. My first try was to do what Bluemouse described, but don't work for me and I needed to restore de backuped registry because the normal boot failed after the changes.

But after to read your post, Redwin... I simply follow your words - I have Daemon Tools installed -, moving SPTD*.sys out from \windows\SYSTEM32\drivers and reboot: PERFECT! :bounce:

Just this to solve for me - the exact point! - MANY THANKS REDWIN (rep to you)! :grinthumb

PS.: Probably I'll consult this GREAT forum again in the future, but I registered just now only to post this message and to thank by the support.

SO, CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYBODY who created, support and announce this *VERY* GOOD site!

Great solution, THANK YOU!

I just registered to say THANKS for the solution. It worked perfectly and I am a happy man again.
:hotbounce
:bounce

Didn't work for me and my problem is a just bit differnent to the original problem

In my case the USB memory stick/flash drive works if it is connected before user logon to computer, but not if it is connected after logon.
I haven't got file C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\SPTD.SYS and solution from BlueMouse didn't work.

Other symptoms are all the same.

1) The drive letter is assinged in the Disk Management
2) I can work with the files on it in CMD window.
3) I can open and save files in any application including IE.
4) USB Hard Drives of any kind work fine.

You migh think that there is no problem just plug it in before logon.

The problem is the system / or better say systems (96 of them in 4 computer labs) are used in a University. There are about 4000 users and itis hard to explain it to each of them.

I am looking after 11 computer labs. 7 of them are MSI Hetis (Intel 915 chipset) and they don't have problem. But 3 older with Intell 865 and new one with DQ965GF chipset are having problem above which I am trying to solve for the last 6 months (from time to time).

Note: I am using same XP Pro SP2 Syspreped image on all computers. The image orignally was developed on MSI machines but I have tried later to reinstal Windows on the 965 chipset image (on the top of existing Windows) and the problem stayed. The image is over 35 GBs mostly Engineering and programing applications whicha are updated at least every semester start, so I don't want to maintaind 2 or 3 images.

Tere is no problem with any of them when I install clean Wndows.

Any help appreciated.

I followed Bluemouse instructions and it worked for me and my camera and all my usb devices are working now. But now in My Computer I have 2 new Local Drives (E) and (F). My hard drive is C and CD-R is D, and now I have these 2 local drives. The first one is a FAT system and it contains a Dell folder and all files MDM files like "Dellsys.mdm and usbmass.mdm.. The 2nd one has a couple of folders. The folders are BAT" , "SRC1" , "SRC2" , "SRC3" , "SRC4" , "SRC5". Can someone tell me what these Local disk are and are they harmful to my computer? Do I need to put those 2 things I backed up from the Registry back there?

Sansa E280 still not working for me

I tried all these solutions posted in this thread but my new mp3 player e280 still does not show as a drive letter. It does appear in the device manager and it works but in order to use automatic sync software it has to show as a drive letter. Any other ideas? THANKS!

Many thanks from Thailand.

Now figure out what caused it. Thanks bye

I've had the same issue on a dell tower running XP 2002 SP2. deleting the upperfilters (plural, btw)from 4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318 worked great for me too. It is likely that Auto update did a downgrade to some files or stomped on a config - how pathetic is that? Microsoft should be embarrassed that everyday users have to do this crap just to get their junk OS to do everyday stuff. Do Linux/UNIX/OSX have issues routinely reading a mounted drive? answer: almost never.