Drive letter changing not working, or being remembered

[meh]

I'm running daemon tools 3.33 on 2000 server SP3, and I want to have it so that the 2 virtual drives are drive letters T: and U: (I always move CDROM drive letters to something more meaningful, like W: for writer, and to leave room for possible future hard drives at letters D:, E: etc.).

The problem I am having is that if I change the drive letter via DT's device parameters, or 2000's own disk management, then the drives vanish from win explorer, and revert back to the default drive letters after a reboot (ie D: and E: ).

I have just changed DT's first virtual drive to T:, with a win explorer window open. D: vanished, and T: appeared, but with an icon with a question mark over. Clicking it gave error "T:\ is not accessible. The folder was moved or removed". And at the command line:

C:\>t:
The system cannot find the drive specified.

C:\>d:
The system cannot find the drive specified.

The two virtual drives are still visible in device manager.

Every other machine that I use DT on I have had no problems changing drive letters, and with this particualar server I have changed the CDROM to be on R: with no problems. I think that this problem may be an issue with the number of controllers that this machine has. The server is a compaq proliant 800, a dual P2 450 box, and it has the SCSI RAID Array controller, two Symbios logic 875XS|D, 2280X PCI SCSI Adapter (as device manager names them);
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and a single IDE channel which has the CDROM on.

DT has been uninstalled, reinstalled etc several times. Any suggestions as to why this may not be working, and how the virtual drives can be moved.

Cheers

[DevX]

This is not issue of any controllers - it is caused by some software you are running, eg. packet writing.

[meh]

I've not got any software running like that. There's no writer in the particular machine (the reference I made to a writer was w.r.t. my main workstation).

What make you think its packet writing software/drivers? Have you seen similar in the past?

The reason why I thought it may be a controller issue, is that I have never used DT on a machine with several SCSI devices, especially something as non-mainstream as a Compaq Proliant (compared to the normal PCs most DT users would be using). The multiple SCSI devices means there's a lot of different drivers loaded, and maybe there's somekind of conflict?

[DevX]

Yes, i have seem many issues with packet writing soft in the past (i never say something without being sure at least 90%).
DT works without problems in systems with many SCSI devices - even 5 SCSI adapters at one time.
Afterall drive letters are assigned not by SCSI controllers themselves, but by Windows. If some filter driver that sits on top of your controller behaves badly then you may even get your system corrupted, though driver of every controller may be perfect.
Please post complete list of burning, emulation and related software that may give the clue.

[meh]

Please post complete list of burning, emulation and related software that may give the clue.

There's not much on the system, especially related to burning. One thought... I have VMWare 4 (http://www.vmware.com) which I have never used in conjuction with DT. I have used previous versions (3 definately) with out my drive letter issue. VMWare is very much aware of what CDROMs you have, and it is possible that one of the various services VMWare installs is "holding" the drive letter, and when I change the drive letter it fscks-up. I changed the Proliant's IDE CDROM drive letter before installing VMWare.

Otherwise the system in 2000 server SP3, and the big apps are Office 2000, VMWare Workstation, Netscape Communicator 4.79, Mozilla 1.4, X-Setup. There is no burning software (not even anything like winiso or winimage). Running services follow. None of the Compaq management tools are installed.

C:\>net start
These Windows 2000 services are started:

Alerter
COM+ Event System
Computer Browser
DHCP Client
Distributed Link Tracking Client
DNS Client
Event Log
IPSEC Policy Agent
Messenger
Net Logon
Network Connections
Plug and Play
Protected Storage
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
RunAs Service
Security Accounts Manager
Server
SetiCPU0
SetiCPU1
System Event Notification
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service
Telephony
Terminal Services
VMware Authorization Service
VMware DHCP Service
VMware NAT Service
VNC Server
Windows Management Instrumentation
Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions
Workstation

The command completed successfully.

I am now thinking this must be some VMWare problem. I will try stopping the VMWare services, and then changing the letters. Maybe even reinstall VMware.

But its far to sunny for me to do that now, so I'm gonna sit in the sun and have a smoke

[meh]

I've not forgotten about this. The machine has got some other serious "issues", along the lines of not being able to stop/start services, and make a lot of system changes. I think my DT problem was just a symptom of an otherwise knackered machine.

For the minute, I'd say close this thread. Cheers for the assistance, I hope I didn't waste too much of your time.