Drive Letter disappears when re-booted

Try this tip from JSI Inc: "Tip 1061 ? SCSI device does not retain drive letter assigned in Disk Administrator."

The link is: http://www.jsiinc.com/TIP1000/rh1061.htm

If answer 1 is not correct the nexr question is do you have any ide devices or is this system a CompaQ?

if so go to this microsoft article
article ID Q158362

if not is your termination all good? before and after all the hard drives?

We were solving similar problem with COMPAQ
ProLiant 2500. After we applied the proper SoftPaq {sorry, I do not remember the number} the problem was gone.

this is in the list of bugs fixed with the newest service patch from microsoft for the nt workstation 4.0 service pack 6 and 6a !!

get the patch at :http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/downloads/recommended/sp6/allsp6.asp?FinishURL=%2Fdownloads%2Frelease%2Easp%3FReleaseID%3D12378%26redirect%3Dno

I have seen flaky behavior in Disk Admin caused by timing conflicts with other services loading auto and started.
Have resolved by disabling services so they do not loadon the next boot. ( all non ms services ) do they changes stick in an environment which is more native?

This may seem and prove futile. It sounds more like a controller card issue. I had similar behavior with ide drives and ide zip drives ( which are seen as scsi adpter by NT.

So,
Timing or
contoller update driver or physical.

Make sure that the last device in the SCSI chain is terminated and that there is terminating power. Make sure that the SCSI card is terminated and that no other drives are terminated.

If disk drives are still misbehaving check the BOOT.INI. Try reverting the configuration. Make sure you back this file up before modifing it.

I presume you are referring to NT Server 4.0 SP5. The admininstrative shares are set to off in the registry ie C$ and D$ etc.. So if you start the registry editor you might observe that the values for AutoShareServer, AutoShareWks , and BeepEnabled have all been set to 0 (zero). AutoShareServer and AutoShareWks are located in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServerParameters

Edit the AutoShareServer and AutoShareWks by double clicing on them and changing the value to 1 (one)

Caution: Be sure to backup you registry and update your repair info and repair diskette before editing the registry.

Dean Eshelman
EJ Consulting
St Louis

I have solved similar problem on COMPAQ
ProLiant 2500 series. U need to apply the newer SoftPaq Patch and Also additionaly apply the newer SP6a for NT.
This would definitely solve ur problem.

Puneet

Hi there !!!

You seems to have stuck with some really interesting problem.....If of the things which comes my mind immediately they are as follows.

1. Create a partition where NT will be install of 2gb or less.....I know you must be wonderingwhy ? the NT installation prorgram is actually a 16 bit and have hosts of difficulties in handling large partitions size.

2. Do not apply any service packs at all.....just load vanila NT which comes pre bundle with Service Pack 1 and observe the symptom.

3. Try and use the latest Adaptec driver during the installation....I am sure you will get the latest driver from the Adaptec web site.....but I do not thing this will help in great way but worth rulling out.....

4. Connect only 1 hard disk and do the necessary configuration then try adding additional hard disk one by one at a time and oberser the symptom.

5. Use only One controller in the system which is on the MB and use option no. 4 and try .....I think this will help inelimanating more the

Rocker can you please let us know what fixes this problem. It seems that there a lot of great answers that could be correct and I for one would like to know the fix.

Thanks

Ken

Remember to click OK to make changes in
effect. If you close out with writing the
changes it will look like nothing happen

I have experienced this problem in CD rom Drives and sometimes in Network drives.
Appling Service Patch, whatever is the latest isn't gonna help that sounds like a tech support answer.. you know.. hire someone of the street and ask him a question kind. On NTFS the size of the partition shouldn't matter. The truth of the matter is Windows NT isn't well made. If it happens it happens.. reinstall the damn software and hope it works fine the next time.. yes anouther techsupport answer but sometimes it come down to that.. If you haven't done anything to Windows and it crashes.. how could you figure out what happened...would you hire a MCSE to find out? would you call Microsoft? by the way.. this is a Microsoft answer..

does this change when the computer is turned completely off as opposed to a warm reboot as this sounds like the old scsi init problem? (BIOS upgrade to SCSI adapter req.)

Have the SCSI controlled give a scsi init on boot (in the adapter BIOS config via Ctrl-A)

make sure you have the correct SCSI bios and latest NT 4.0 driver.

Are you using an active termination cable?

This sounds like a software problem and make sure you are not doing anything funny with the default administrative share, so check the permission on the security tab.

Did you see the popup window about to confirm the change after the next rebooting after you assign the drive letter from the Disk Administrator?

-KHY

1- Assign Letters Z,Y,X etc. to your CD/DVD drives in an down-to-up order.
2- Disconnect any network MAPPED drive letter even if it's mapped to local machine.
3- Reboot your system.
4- Start NT with VGA mode and check you CD/DVD drive letters andmake sure nothing went wrong.
5- Manage any Phantom or Ghost Drive Letter that you might find in VGA mode.
6- Restart you system in normal mode
7- Assign drive letters and commit changes
8- Reboot your machine.

review thoroughly the documentation that came
with your scsi ultra dma cheetah,recheck jumpers then let cmos autodetect it.review also your security policies or system policies their could be some checkboxes in your diskmanegement that you left enabled due to security reasons.

I have experience similiar problems in the past. The solution I have impleneted that worked for me was:

1) Enable parity on the controller and all devices.

2) Turn on Int13 and make sure the devices
support it.

One or both solutions should be all you need to do.

Rocker,
You have been given great suggestions from all over, but have you checked Ms Knowledge base for similar issues like this? I would start from there.

Good Luck!