Drive letter missing

Hopefully someone here can help this nearly-geezer.

I'm running an XP SP2 machine that until recently has been well behaved.
Seemingly, after installing software for my wife's new Sony camera, drive
"H" has vanished.

I have a floppy (A&B), two hard drives (C&D), two optical drives (E&F) and
one USB removable drive running on the system. The USB drive occupies drive
"G", the last drive in the sequence. I also have a 4-port USB hub that I
use for thumb drives, scanners and cameras. The thumb drives and my Fuji
camera have always appeared as drive "H" when I plug them in.

Now, I can insert a thumb drive and it will not appear in Windows Explorer
nor in My Computer. It will however, appear in device manager as a USB
device. The weird part is, I can plug in a second USB storage device and it
appears as drive "I". If I just leave a spare thumb drive in the hub, all
additional devices operate normally starting with "I" until the hub is full.

I have deleted drive "H" with DISKPART from the command prompt hoping "H"
would clear and operate normally but changed nothing. Of course, I removed
the Sony drivers beforehand.

All suggestions appreciated.

gdp

"Don Pyeatt" <gdp@cowtown.net> wrote in
news:yOjvi.14$234.10@newsfe05.lga:

> Hopefully someone here can help this nearly-geezer.
>
> I'm running an XP SP2 machine that until recently has been well
> behaved. Seemingly, after installing software for my wife's new
> Sony camera, drive "H" has vanished.
>
> I have a floppy (A&B), two hard drives (C&D), two optical drives
> (E&F) and one USB removable drive running on the system. The USB
> drive occupies drive "G", the last drive in the sequence. I also
> have a 4-port USB hub that I use for thumb drives, scanners and
> cameras. The thumb drives and my Fuji camera have always appeared
> as drive "H" when I plug them in.
>
> Now, I can insert a thumb drive and it will not appear in Windows
> Explorer nor in My Computer. It will however, appear in device
> manager as a USB device. The weird part is, I can plug in a
> second USB storage device and it appears as drive "I". If I just
> leave a spare thumb drive in the hub, all additional devices
> operate normally starting with "I" until the hub is full.
>
> I have deleted drive "H" with DISKPART from the command prompt
> hoping "H" would clear and operate normally but changed nothing.
> Of course, I removed the Sony drivers beforehand.
>
> All suggestions appreciated.
>
> gdp

Connect the problem drives and have look in the Disk Management
console:

Control Panel > Admin Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

If your missing drives are listed it may just be a question of
assigning or reassigning drive letters, or some other fiddling in
there.

"Toast" <me@not.here> wrote in message
news:Xns998BE54D415C3toastingtoastnet@130.133.1.4. ..
> "Don Pyeatt" <gdp@cowtown.net> wrote in
> news:yOjvi.14$234.10@newsfe05.lga:
>
>> Hopefully someone here can help this nearly-geezer.
>>
>> I'm running an XP SP2 machine that until recently has been well
>> behaved. Seemingly, after installing software for my wife's new
>> Sony camera, drive "H" has vanished.
>>
>> I have a floppy (A&B), two hard drives (C&D), two optical drives
>> (E&F) and one USB removable drive running on the system. The USB
>> drive occupies drive "G", the last drive in the sequence. I also
>> have a 4-port USB hub that I use for thumb drives, scanners and
>> cameras. The thumb drives and my Fuji camera have always appeared
>> as drive "H" when I plug them in.
>>
>> Now, I can insert a thumb drive and it will not appear in Windows
>> Explorer nor in My Computer. It will however, appear in device
>> manager as a USB device. The weird part is, I can plug in a
>> second USB storage device and it appears as drive "I". If I just
>> leave a spare thumb drive in the hub, all additional devices
>> operate normally starting with "I" until the hub is full.
>>
>> I have deleted drive "H" with DISKPART from the command prompt
>> hoping "H" would clear and operate normally but changed nothing.
>> Of course, I removed the Sony drivers beforehand.
>>
>> All suggestions appreciated.
>>
>> gdp
>
> Connect the problem drives and have look in the Disk Management
> console:
>
> Control Panel > Admin Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management
>
> If your missing drives are listed it may just be a question of
> assigning or reassigning drive letters, or some other fiddling in
> there.

Have done that, the "H" drive is listed as healthy but not active. The Make
Active button is grayed. Drive "H" will not appear in My Computer nor in
Windows Explorer.

Today I discovered the H drive is listed in Control Panel in Portable Media
Devices > Removable Disk (H) with its contents listed. In Computer
Management > Storage > Removable Storage it is listed as a Library with the
two optical drives.