Mike's Tech Blog

Recently my boss's computer from his home wouldn't recognize the Jump Drive they were using. Sometimes what Windows will do is rename a Drive Letter that is already in use. In this case, what I

discovered was that I set his computer up to VPN into work, and had re-arranged the drive letters on his computer so that his VPN drive letters would match his drives at work. Originally, his Jump Drive was his H: drive, which I made to be his VPN drive. When he would plug in his Jump drive, he couldn't see it. Here is what I did to fix this problem.

First, right click on My Computer, then click on Manage. A window like the image below will open up. 

Click on Disk Management, which is circled in the image on the left.

 Next, another window will open up on the right side, and will look similar to the image below.

In this window you will see all of your physical hard drives, as well as misc. information on them such as their health and such. Your computer will probably show something different, but what you are looking for is a drive that indicates your USB drive. In my case, it is drive letter E.

Below this window is another window similar to the one pictured below:

 In order to change the drive letter of the USB drive, right click on the drive as circled in the image to the right.

Next click on  Change Drive Letter and Paths. Then another window will open up. Make sure the drive letter is highlighted by single clicking on it, then click on Change and select a new drive letter from the drop down list.

Click yes on the confirmation screen, and you are done!

Just so you know, you will get a warning that states that changing a drive letter volume might cause programs  to no longer run. Just click OK.

If you have  autoplay enabled (most people do..) then you will get the usual dialog box asking you what to do just like when you plug in your USB drive.so from here, you know what to do.

A word of caution, Like I said at the beginning of this article, I had set another drive letter on my boss's home computer. Before I did this, originally his jump drive letter was H, which was also the same drive letter for his VPN drive. The problem was that the VPN drive was "covering up" the old H drive, which wasthe USB drive's letter!

What I had to do was disable the VPN first. Then the USB drive showed up, and I was able to give the USB drive a new letter. Now the USB drive show up as a different letter, as well as the VPN drive, and everyone is now happy.

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