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finds removable storage as network drive

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by hailes103z

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I am using an image of Win XP to load mulitple systems. Some of them discover the CD-RW drive or USB flash memory and lists it under network drives. It's the same network drive which may have been mapped before on the original image. When I look in disk management I can see the device correctly and the drive letter. On one I was able to delete it and rediscover it correctly but I'm having trouble with the rest. I can't disconnect the "network drive" or delete it and when I remove the device it comes back the same way. These are on desktops and notebooks from diffent manufacturers. Why does it do this? How can I avoid it? And how can I fix it when it happens? Please help.

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by w2ktechman

I would look to see if disk management finds them, I had a similar problem with an external drive, but I was able to "set" the new drive letter in disk management. Then it worked fine.

right click my computer -- select manage -- select disk management

by hailes103z

Poster rated this answer.
It already has the next drive letter and is accessible. But in explorer it shows as a Network Drive with a share name of our servers. If you have anymore info I'll be glad to give the points.

by hailes103z

I found what created it. It was the restore function of a backup program that restored locally mapped drives. If they are unreachable at the time it cameup and saw the CD-ROM or usb flash drive and it used the next available drive letter. On some machines the mapped drive was the next availble drive letter. Therefore, in explorer it was still named as a mapped drive but gave access to the real device.
To fix it I changed the device drive letter. Reconnected the mapped drive and then disconnect it and/or reconnect again with a higher letter. Then I changed the device driver letter back.
There was no registry entries that could be altered to remove the mapped name from explorer that I could find.

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