Making an external hard drive same letter in every PC

[LoveLess]

I have an External Hard drive well actually many that I need them to be the same letter path in every PC that I hook them up. Yes that can be fixed by going into computer manage but you can't explain this to every person/dummy out there that doesn't know a thing about computers.
My Hard drive is letter "S" when I hook it up to another PC do to the programs in the hard drive if the drive letter is not S it will not work. So
when I hook this external hard drives into another PC it always changes letter such as D of E and yes I'm aware of the fact that if there is another Hard drive/CD-dvd-Rom with the letter "S" already in the PC the external hard drive can't be S aswell but for the chances of that being the issue are one in a thousand. I have a Friend who has done this before that unfortunately I no longer have contact with him since he moved but he used the letter "O" for his hard drives and never change letter in any computer unless if the letter O was already taken. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!

[Deleted]

Well each system's volumes are different when it comes to the system tree. The volumes are alphabetically listed and are unique to the devices plugged into that system at the time. Static drive letters can be assigned, but those are reserved from system to system. You could assign the same static drive letter on each system or possibly script a batch file (like autorun.inf) and this would initiate when the drive was inserted where it would auto-assign the drive letter. But this requires local admin capability and wouldn't work on a system where you did not have that permission set.

[LoveLess]

I saw a autorun/bat file code but didn't worked at all or I did it wrong. I have a hard drive that a friend lend to me and when you plug it in in any PC it's always as O:\ drive kinda cool if you ask me.

[Deleted]

Oct 16, 2014 15:57:27 GMT -5 LoveLess said:

I saw a autorun/bat file code but didn't worked at all or I did it wrong. I have a hard drive that a friend lend to me and when you plug it in in any PC it's always as O:\ drive kinda cool if you ask me.

When I have some free time, let me see if I can whip something up for you. I can create a script that should be able to do this for you....

[Deleted]

Well, after a lot of attempts I ran into the same problems over and over:

1. Windows 7 disables autorun.inf from a USB device, so I tried to script something to change the option for AutoPlay AND allow the USB to be recognized as an AutoRun compliant driver. In other words, the device must have AutoRun-compatible drivers and Windows 7 security prevents this by default. To be AutoRun-compatible, a driver notifies the system that a disk has been inserted by sending a WM_DEVICECHANGE message to the OS. I haven't found a way around this yet.
2. If the drive being specified already has something assigned to it (i.e. a drive is assigned letter "Z"), it would not recognize nor label the drive appropriately.
3. Calling a .bat file from autorun.inf does assign a label, but it doesn't bypass the AutoPlay feature.

To get AutoRun to work on other media devices:

•The device must have AutoRun-compatible drivers. To be AutoRun-compatible, a driver must notify the system that a disk has been inserted by sending a WM_DEVICECHANGE message.
•The root directory of the inserted media must contain an Autorun.inf file.
•The device must not have AutoRun disabled through the registry.
•The foreground application has not suppressed AutoRun.

I guess you'll need to contact your buddy and find out how he did this since the changes for the registry and the WMI messaging would need to be in the batch file called by the AutoRun.inf. I can do one or the other, but cannot bet both to work collectively.

uMessage = RegisterWindowMessage(TEXT("QueryCancelAutoPlay"));

UINT g_uQueryCancelAutoPlay = 0;

BOOL DialogProc(HWND hwnd, UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam)
{
switch (uMsg)
{
...
default:
if (!g_uQueryCancelAutoPlay)
{
g_uQueryCancelAutoPlay = RegisterWindowMessage(TEXT("QueryCancelAutoPlay"));
}
if (uMsg == g_uQueryCancelAutoPlay)
{
SetWindowLong(hDlg, DWL_MSGRESULT, TRUE);
return 1;
}
}

[Deleted]

Oct 22, 2014 14:36:06 GMT -5 @moon said:

uMessage = RegisterWindowMessage(TEXT("QueryCancelAutoPlay"));

UINT g_uQueryCancelAutoPlay = 0;

BOOL DialogProc(HWND hwnd, UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam)
{
switch (uMsg)
{
...
default:
if (!g_uQueryCancelAutoPlay)
{
g_uQueryCancelAutoPlay = RegisterWindowMessage(TEXT("QueryCancelAutoPlay"));
}
if (uMsg == g_uQueryCancelAutoPlay)
{
SetWindowLong(hDlg, DWL_MSGRESULT, TRUE);
return 1;
}
}

I was close to having the same answer.....I just forgot the second "="in the 13th line. How can I be so stupid!!!

[Deleted]

[Deleted]

O Man...Yo Ri5k, it's starting to get deep in here...LOL..