Can not Change drive letter Windows 7

Anonymous

The error message "disk Management console view not up to date" comes up everytime I try to change the drive letter for an external USB hard drive. I tried diskpart but it only lists drives with letters.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Version 6.1.7600 Build 7600

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Name DAD-PC

System Manufacturer System manufacturer

System Model System Product Name

System Type X86-based PC

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 975 @ 3.33GHz, 3334 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 0707, 8/18/2009

SMBIOS Version 2.5

Windows Directory C:\Windows

System Directory C:\Windows\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1

Locale United States

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7600.16385"

User Name Dad-PC\Dad

Time Zone Mountain Daylight Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 12.0 GB

Total Physical Memory 1.49 GB

Available Physical Memory 655 MB

Total Virtual Memory 2.98 GB

Available Virtual Memory 1.40 GB

Page File Space 1.49 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

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Anonymous

Hello,

Hello TestPantaloon,

You must be logged on as an administrator to perform these steps.

If you don't like the letter Windows has assigned to a new drive or you want to organize your drive letters in a certain way, you can change the drive letter.You can assign the letters C through Z to each drive on your computer. A and B are usually reserved for floppy disk drives, but if your computer does not have floppy disk drives, you can assign A and B to volumes. You can see which drive letters are used on your computer by opening Computer.


<br>		•	Open Computer by clicking the<br>Start button, and then clicking Computer.	<br>	---	---

You can change, add, or remove a drive letter by using Computer Management.


			<br>1. <br>Open Computer Management by clicking the<br>Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, clicking Administrative Tools, and then double-clicking<br>Computer Management. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.	<br>	---	---	<br>		<br>2. <br>In the Navigation pane, click<br>Disk Management.	<br>		<br>3. <br>Right-click the partition or drive that you want to change, and then click<br>Change Drive Letter and Paths.	<br>		<br>4. <br>Do one of the following:<br><br><br><br>	•	To assign a drive letter if one has not already been assigned, click<br>Add, click the letter that you want to use, and then click OK.	<br>	---	---	<br>	•	To change a drive letter, click<br>Change, click Assign the following drive letter, click the letter that you want to use, and then click<br>OK.	<br>	•	To remove a drive letter, click<br>Remove, and then click Yes to confirm that you want to remove it.

Once you have done this, look in Computer, now simply right click to create a shortcut from there and it will put it on the desktop!

Hope this helps you. Let us know either way. Make it a great day!

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51 additional answers

Anonymous

2010-02-13T20:36:33+00:00

I have the same problem and your proposed solution does not work.

When I go throught that process I get a box titled "Virtual Disk Manager" and the statement "The parameter is not valid"

I have new laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

I have tried rebooting, right clicking the console and clicking Run As Administrator, tried flash drives, usb external drives, and SD cards

Windows will not allow drive letter change.

As other writers have said, this is likely a Windows issue, not a user issue.
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Anonymous

2010-02-02T12:31:41+00:00

Sounds like a great fix, if it would work! What about the possible errors "Disk Management Console view is not up-to-date"? Do we really have to go and get another program just to fix this error? Diskpart is just as confusing as everything else. Having know how much trouble this would be, I would not have switched to 7!
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Anonymous

2010-01-31T14:53:46+00:00

Markubis

I am having exactly the same problem you have. Most of the right click options are grayed out. I have two drives. One was simply a second data drive and the other was my boot drive before I upgraded to Windows 7. I was running XP. I had both drives disconnected when I did the upgrade so they would be safe from accidental erasure.

I might switch drives and try rebooting to the old operating system and then change drive letters on the data drive there to see if that helps when I swap back and restart Windows 7. But even if that works, it would only work for the data drive because I don't believe I'd be able to change drive letters for the XP boot drive C:. At least I'd get the data drive back.

I have everything backed up on and external USB drive so worse case I can reformat and recover from that.

I've been looking for an answer since upgrading late yesterday, but have found no other references so far to this problem. I'll keep looking and post back here if I find a solution. Please do the same for me.

Thanks, tdhia
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Anonymous

2010-01-30T12:17:17+00:00

@LynnD5050 and others that have helped with this

I have been having the same problem but mine is slightly different. When I right click on that one particular drive that is not showing a drive letter, most of my options are grayed out and unable to be edited. The only options that are available to me for that hard drive are "Delete Volume" and "Properties".

My other drives are not grayed out and I can edit them.

The only thing I see differently on this one problematic drive is that the "File System" entry for it is blank where as my other drives are NTFS. Besides that, it is showing as healthy , active, primary partition...and it is called out as being a "Basic" drive (which is the same as the others)

I have already tried making it a master and a slave and I have not noticed any change. (its currently set to slave)

The bios sees it fine and the device manager sees it as fine.

Any ideas why I am only allowed to "delete Volume" on this drive? (it originally was primary drive on my old computer and had XP Pro on it)

thanks for any help you can provide
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