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

2011-02-25T22:55:36+00:00

Hey Microsoft.....Seeing as this issue has been ongoing in the forums for almost 2 years now and the one proposed solution by MS has not resolved the issue for the greatest majority how about treating us like paying customers and have someone obtain the information necessary to repro it and resolve this. If you guys won't commit the resources to do that then you shouldn't be in the business.

This has been an ongoing issue for myself and many others now and the sheer lack of any presence by MS staff in the forum to help with the issue is DISGUSTING. This is happening on a wide variety of PCs and external drives whether they be HDD or jump drives. So obviously the common denominator here is Win 7 so please step up and be accountable to your product and design as any corporation should.

If no one on the MS support staff is available or being paid to assist in these forums then don't host them through MS. Jeez Lexar has been more thorough and offered more assistance than MS would even want to know about.

Care enough to support your product or don't have one.....2 years almost and no serious presence by MS....SICKENING!!!

-Cheers
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Anonymous

2011-02-12T06:20:48+00:00

I have the same issue.

Disk Management - the drive shows up as healthy, all options except delete and help are greyed out.

Device Manager - the drive shows up where it's supposed to, is enabled, and shows no problems. It's not listed under Hidden Devices, Storage Volumes - all generic

Selected update driver, automatically search, driver already installed.

Drive was partitioned and formatted in Windows XP, I have just installed Windows 7. Drive is a SATA Western Digitial 1TB.
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Anonymous

2011-02-06T10:43:18+00:00

I as many others apparently have a similar issue;

Disk Management - all options except delete and help are greyed out.

Went to Device Manager, View, Show Hidden Devices, Storage Volumes - all volumes show as generic, no unknowns devices and the volume count matches what Disk Management reports (including the unassignable partition).

Selected to update driver for each, automatically search (online, etc) all responses indicated that the best driver for each volume was already installed.

Device in question is a USB Hard Drive with 2 partitions (NTFS & Fat32); which interestingly enough I can mount both partitions on the drive in XP and UNIX (Linux, Solaris, and OSX), but not in Windows 7.

One additional point, drive was partitioned and formatted in Windows 7 Beta.
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Anonymous

2011-01-12T14:16:28+00:00

Get out of "Disk Management" and go to "Device Manager" Then follow these instructions:

Go to Device Manager...Go to View....Show Hidden Devices...Under Storage Volumes there will be an "Unknown Device" ...Right click and DELETE it.

Now go back to Explorer or MY Computer and see if your drive is there. Mine was there and working just fine. It also showed in Disk Manager with a drive letter and no more Console view not up to date, or "Grayed out areas". This should work for you.

Tony
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