Microsoft KB Archive/93234

= How a CD-ROM Drive Letter Is Assigned =

Article ID: 93234

Article Last Modified on 5/12/2003

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft MS-DOS 5.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 5.0a
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 6.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 6.2 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 6.21 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q93234



SUMMARY
The drive letter for a CD-ROM drive is assigned by the MSCDEX.EXE command in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, not by the device specific driver in the CONFIG.SYS file. MSCDEX.EXE loads the Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions.



MORE INFORMATION
MSCDEX.EXE assigns a CD-ROM the next available drive letter. For example, if a computer has two floppy drives (drives A and B) and one physical hard drive with two partitions (drives C and D), then MSCDEX will assign the CD- ROM the drive letter E. It is possible to specify a drive letter to the CD- ROM by using a command line switch on the MSCDEX.EXE of /L:x, where x is the drive letter you want to assign. To assign a CD-ROM the drive letter H, you would use the following command:   MSCDEX /L:H When using a RAM Drive along with a CD-ROM, the RAM Drive will be assigned the first available drive letter, because RAMDRIVE.SYS (which loads in the CONFIG.SYS) is loaded before MSCDEX. The CD-ROM will then be assigned the second available drive letter.

Additional query words: 6.22 cdrom ramdrive

Keywords: KB93234

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