Mounting a Floppy Drive on A:

I have inherited a Compaq Presario 1700 laptop that has no floppy drive. With a usb connection I have added an external floppy drive, currently E:. I want to remove the ghost A: drive in My Computer and replace it with the external floppy. Does anyone know how to do this?

 

To clarify, are you wanting to change the drive letter of your external floppy to A:

 

"to change the drive letter of your external floppy to A: "
Sorry I wasn't clear earlier. Yes, I want to do precisely that.

 

at first - I haven't tried it so I don't know if it works - and I just havent got a box to test it on - but - I would guess that if you disable the "native" driver for the floppy drive in the devicemanager (open this and select discettedrives) then Windows will itself re-enumerate the drive-letter when you reboot it..
regards /ti

 

Ti, I disabled the floppy drive in Device Manager, as you suggested, but, as I feared, my external floppy comes up as B:, not A:. A: is simply eliminated. I need the floppy to read as A: for all those times when Windows asks for A: and will accept no substitutes....So, any ideas how to change the name of B to A?

 

Along that same line, boot to the BIOS Setup program and see if you can disable A: in the BIOS and maybe the software will re-enumerate the drive-letters. You can try disabling B: if disabling A: doesn't work.

 

No luck disabling it in Bios, it still comes up as B:. I once knew a way to change the registry to accomplish this switch to A:, but that was for Win98 and I've since lost the instructions any way.

 

I wonder if this is what you're thinking of? From:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

 

The Kelly Korners regedit download is for XP and I'm running win2000. Will it work? Also, this is what the regedit would be:

ÿþW i n d o w s R e g i s t r y E d i t o r V e r s i o n 5 . 0 0



[ H K E Y _ C U R R E N T _ U S E R \ S o f t w a r e \ M i c r o s o f t \ W i n d o w s \ C u r r e n t V e r s i o n \ P o l i c i e s \ E x p l o r e r ]

" N o D r i v e s " = h e x : 0 1 , 0 0 , 0 0 , 0 0

Does that look right? It seems to me it will eliminate drives, but then I don't know much about the registry. Remember, I no longer need to eliminate drives, just to chance the external floppy, now called B: to A:

 

I don't know, but would be surprised in it didn't work in 2K. You should make a restore point prior to any registry work, just in case. This one I got by clicking 'enable':

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

Code:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
 "NoDrives "=hex:00,00,00,00

The other one should look similar - only use notepad as an editor for these but be sure not to save them as .txt, only .reg!

 

I used the Kelly Korner regedit fix and it removed the A: ghost in My Computer, but the external floppy drive still comes up as B:. I then went to Mounted Devices in the registry which lists all of the drives on the machine(the only place A: is listed in the registry) and renamed A: to M:, then tried to rename B: to A: but the machine would not accept it. It still comes up in My Computer as B:.

 

Good try. Have no more ideas at present; maybe one of the readers will chime in and teach us.