Community Newsletter: Q&A forum: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters?

If you've loaded drivers for any of those devices, those drivers can often cause all types of headaches. Remember, Windows is not fully a 100% Microsoft creation on any given machine. There are a LOT of different companies and developers that go into the final product that you are using on your desk. Many drivers, many programs and many "features" that are outside the realm of Microsoft's ability to create a stable system. Hardware itself can also be to blame. Much of today's hardware includes it's own internal "smarts" and small routines to do tasks when they are turned on or plugged in. Those routines can also cause changes to occur that are not intended.

My first recommendation is to never load a driver unless you need to. So many devices already work out of the box without special drivers. Printers are usually the exception, but not always. Flash cards unfortunately are the worst for special drivers that are usually not needed, or are force installed upon the first insert of the card or USB flash stick. Be very wary of such devices that have "special software" included.

Best thing to do is to find the original maker of the machine, or the maker of the hardware that might be causing the problem and ask them if their drivers or hardware could cause such headaches. They may have an updated driver that fixes such problems.

Good luck.