[gerryf]

I'd like to find out too--in addition to those drives. what else is getting reset?

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All the drive lettering. See, my primary harddisk doesnt change because windows letters all partitions on the main drive before anything else. So, drives C to J stay the same

But, all the others change. Opticals become K L M because those are the next letters in line. Consequently, my external USB drive that I use for backups, that has 2 partitions, become N and O

( I set windows to recognize them as L M initially, leaving K in between for my MP3 and other removables )

After the drives get reset, all of these settings revert to default sequence.

And that's in the registry that it's happening... where I said, local machine/system/mounteddevices

[Vaillant]

All the drive lettering. See, my primary harddisk doesnt change because windows letters all partitions on the main drive before anything else. So, drives C to J stay the same

But, all the others change. Opticals become K L M because those are the next letters in line. Consequently, my external USB drive that I use for backups, that has 2 partitions, become N and O

( I set windows to recognize them as L M initially, leaving K in between for my MP3 and other removables )

After the drives get reset, all of these settings revert to default sequence.

And that's in the registry that it's happening... where I said, local machine/system/mounteddevices

[gerryf]

i actually meant in addition to drives...

any idea what kind of motherboard?

I am wondering if you have a corrupt registry key, particularly this one

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\Scsi

which is used to build the drive cascade

When windows boots, the above key is supposed to be dynamically created in memory by the windows kernal, and then later, when the registry is built, it is created

I wonder if there is not something else going on here.....

Anything eventvwr? Errors? When was the last time you ran a chkdsk?

[Vaillant]

It's a dell dimension 4600i motherboard

as for the reg key, it looks fine, but then this is the first time I've looked at it

As for eventvwr, I do have a few errors poping up here and there...

Hello wow this one might interest you.

These 3 images are from my log in the date of the 14th--yesterday-- the most recent occurance of the drive relettering.

Aye we ARE onto something. All the dates that this happened has the same error messages.

And surprize surprize, once I follow the log past the 2 week mark, basically before I had high speed installed, that specific error dissapears. ( another one pops up because of W32 time because it had no connection to acces windows time, but that is normal i used to be on dialup)

[Vaillant]

http://vaillant.t35.com/crash2.png
http://vaillant.t35.com/crash3.png
http://vaillant.t35.com/crash4.png

[gerryf]

interesting....something from sygate...firewall perhaps?

[Vaillant]

Yes indeed actually

Sygate firewall. Come to think about it, it's been giving me crash windows at shutdown just before the machine turns off... never could get to read the whole thing cause it only comes up for a second or 2

Hehe it never crossed my mind that SCM was short for Service Control Manager...

What do you recommend I do about this? I'm thinking reinstall or perhaps getting a new firewall, but I really like sygate (too bad symantec bought it)

Edited by Vaillant, 15 February 2006 - 04:27 PM.

[gerryf]

Yes, too bad, I didn't even know Symantec bought it until I went looking for possible similar experiences...when the heck did that happen?

All the good firewalls are going down the crapper all the sudden

Personally, I would uninstall it, see if the situation improves without our workaround, then try to reinstall

I think this is our issue...Sygate is crashing before Windows Can safe the registry key, and that is why the set drive letters are not saving.

If that turns out to be true, you and I are a couple of geniuses for figuring it out!

[Vaillant]

Hehe indeed OK, i'll run for a week without sygate and without the workaround.

Dont like going firewall-less though, so if I activate my win firewall do you figure it could cause any problems to our "test" ?

I think not, but might as well we agree on everything

[gerryf]

no, I think you're good with just the Windows Firewall for a short time...or, try another

http://www.snapfiles...fwfirewall.html

(not zonealarm...hate zonealarm)

[Vaillant]

Allright, well, I'm going to use win firewall for a week, and if error doesnt pop back up, which it will most likely not, I'll start using Jetico instead... my SCM version is old, and they dont have any more updates for it... And seeing how it's soon to be under symantec jurisdiction, i want to rid myself of it...

It's a real shame, like you said, that all the good firewalls are being lost.

[gerryf]

I hear ya, just this week I had to retire my trusty kerio 2.1.5, my most favoritist (hmmm?) firewall of all time. It was causing terrible issues with the the free, beta of vmware server that I am just loving to death

[Vaillant]

Hehe yeah. Another oddity, sygate refused to uninstall correctly, and now I have a dead program on my hands lol

Gonna go about deleting the registry keys and folders manually

And yes, vmware is a very excellent program. I use it myself for all my mad-scientist'ing that I do on windows before applying to my main OS

[Vaillant]

**Removed own post

I asked an incredibly stupid question that I answered myself just now... Act like it never happened.

Edited by Vaillant, 16 February 2006 - 04:01 PM.

[Vaillant]

Ok Gerryf, are you ready for round two?

You'll be happy to learn that scince I uninstalled Sygate, the drive letters have been happily staying the way they are supposed to be.

That said, I've re-encountered the original glitch I had been having for months now. The built-in CD burning for windows XP has re-activated itself again. As I said previously, I don't understand why it's doing this, and I want to stop this from happenning.

I want to either disable, or uninstall the built-in burning. Seeing how its a built-in feature, I highly doubt it can be uninstalled, but, if it's an option, I'd like to explore it with you.

I'm posting here the link for the .reg file I use to disable the CD burning. Take note I make all my reg files myself, very few were downloaded ( mind you they were all made using fixes I read about online )

the Reg fix I made

Thanks.