Hard Drive Letter Has Changed

Ok so here's the story. Often, when my computer shuts down on it's own (as in, crashes), the drive letters get switched around. My external HD is generally assigned the letter E, but often gets reassigned to G, and magically another CD drive appears in My Computer. It does not exist, but all of the sudden there are two CD drives, E and F. I've tried the Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management route, and it doesn't work anymore. It won't allow me to change any letters. I also used the Registry Editor. That used to always work for me but now it does not.

In the Editor, there are drives A, C, D, F, and G. So that proves that the second CD drive that appears in My Computer doesn't even exist according to the registry. Usually I can just change G to E and it's fine. But after I restart, it is still G and this other drive E is still there.

What can I do to fix this? I called HP and they told me I was out of warranty and I'd have to pay $59 bucks to get a technician to talk to me. Thanks for any help!!!

 

Do you know what is causing your system to shutdown / crash? Visit the Spyware specific thread and go through the tutorial sticky on removing spyware. Hopefully, you are facing software issues and not hardware.