Cannot Change Drive Letter

Anonymous
2009-04-24T12:33:27+00:00

Vita 64 Ultimate. I have an external eSATA unit for backups. Recently got SSD for second drive in my laptop. After formatting, Vista assigned the SSD drive F: which had been being used by the external drive.  Disk Management->Change Drive Letter and Paths->Change Drive Letter returns a Logical Disk Manager error message saying Parameter is Incorrect.  Removing the drive letter appears to work, but rescanning or refreshing Disk Manager causess the letter to reappear.  I need to swap these drive letters.  Can you assist?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2010-11-17T01:46:44+00:00

ACTUALLY I got it to work, finally.  I am not technical.  So just use minitool partition wizard, found here:

http://download.cnet.com/Partition-Wizard-Home-Edition/3000-2094\_4-10962200.html?tag=mncol;6

  1. open the program, right-click on the drive you want to change
  2. select "change letter"
  3. click the drop down box by "new drive letter"
  4. select the letter you want to change it to
  5. click "ok"
  6. at the bottom left corner of the program click "apply"

and that's how you do it

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Anonymous
2009-04-25T01:17:05+00:00

Hello kd4wat,

 Thank you for your reply!

 The error "Parameter is Incorrect" is an indication that the drive is in use.  I have added some steps below that I hope will correct your issue.  Please let me know status.

To change the drive letter or paths in Windows Vista, just follow these simple steps:

  1. Right click on Computer and select Manage to open and access Computer Management Console.
  2. Navigate to and expand the Storage section, and click on Disk Management to access Disk Management Console.
  3. Disk Management Console display the details of all available volumes and disk drives in the computer configuration in the right pane.
  4. Right click on the volume or disk drive that you want to change the drive letter, and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths).
  5. Then click on “Change” button.
  6. Use the drop down list to select the new and your desired drive letter to assign to the disk volume.
  7. Click OK.
  8. Click Yes to confirm.

Any letter between C and Z can be assigned to a hard disk drive, CD drive, DVD drive, portable external hard disk drive, or USB flash memory key drive, while floppy disk drives use up letters A and B. Beside, the drive letter for the system volume or boot partition cannot be modified or changed. And if you install some applications or programs in the drive that you have just changed the drive letter, they may not functioning properly after the change due to the possibilities that the programs will also refer to the specific drive letter or original path used when installation as environmental variables.

James Microsoft Answers Support Engineer Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

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  1. Anonymous
    2009-09-24T15:33:45+00:00

    By the way, this problem doesn't happen on Windows 7. Only seems to be an issue on Vista.

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  2. Anonymous
    2009-08-31T15:22:35+00:00

    Hello kd4wat,

     Thank you for your reply!

     The error "Parameter is Incorrect" is an indication that the drive is in use.  I have added some steps below that I hope will correct your issue.  Please let me know status.

    The "drive is in use" seems to be the key, but the "steps below" are simply reiterating what we've tried that didn't work from the beginning.

    I have a laptop with two drives and tried to change the drive letter on a data partition (not the system partition), arriving at this same problem. I did find a solution that worked. I ran msconfig and chose "Selective startup." Under the services tab, I told it to run the Virtual Disk service, which the logical disk manager needs in order to run. On reboot I was able to change drive letters (probably because no other services or startup programs were loaded, making them unable to lock the drive). After I was done, I ran msconfig again and changed back to a normal startup.

    I was doing this with an internal drive. If this procedure causes a USB drive to be inaccessible during the "selective startup" mode, that would probably mean that some other service needs to be running for the USB drive to function.

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  3. Anonymous
    2009-08-14T06:37:42+00:00

    I have the same issue on my laptop and the steps above do nothing in or out of administrator mode. As for the drive being in use One of the drives is a USB external HDD, and the other I was trying to change is the internal CD rom. I even went so far as removing the external drive and trying it again on the cd rom. In the past on 32 bit OS I would recommend using a program available at downloads.com called "unlocker" but it does not seem to operate in the 64 bit Vista OS I have. Oh and if this happens to a CD / DVD Rom make sure you disable autoplay and lightscribe utilities and remove the disk from the drive, these fixed my CD Rom but I am stuck to fix a external USB HDD as it is doing the same thing.

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