I have recently upgraded to Windows XP pro. From what I have read the system can only activate and use a total of 4 drives. I have a hard drive, cd-rw, cd/dvd drive, hp photosmart printer media disc reader - all of which work great. However I also have a floppy drive and a zip drive which do not work. They both show in device manager that they are enabled and working, both have the most current drivers available.

Since I do not use the printer reader all the time is there a way to toggle between the floppy/printer/zip drives in order to use them when needed?

Thanks for your help. --- SusanI think that there is... Go to My Computer, find the drive(s) that you don't need, and right-click on one... Next, click on PROPERTIES... Next, click on the hardware tab. After, look at the bottom where it says enable, and click on the arrow and disable it. I hope this helps you...

[glb]Flame[/glb]I suspect that what you read was referring to the fact that you can only have four partitions on a drive. The reason being is that there are only four slots in the master boot record.

Actually you can have 26 drives installled on a system; one for each letter of the alphabet. Now before you say whoopee, drives A and B are reserved for the floppies. Even if your machine has only one or no floppy, you can't use those letters for something else. C is the hard drive. If you want to, you can partition the hard drive.

There are two types of partitions, primary and extended. Each primary partition can contain one operating system.
If you have multiple primary partions, only one can be active at any point in time and it will be assigned as the C drive.

An extended partition acts as a container and can hold multiple logical drives with each logical drive being assigned a drive letter.

As CD, DVD, USB devices GET added on to the system, they too are assigned a drive letter.

If your system is part of a network, then any shared drives that are mapped will also get a drive letter.

As you can see, there is no need to limit the number of enabled devices. More interesting though, why don't the floppy and zip drive work?

Regards
I may not have stated my problem clearly ----- neither the floppy drive or the zip drive have been assigned letter designations. They do not show up in My Computer whether they have discs in or not. I am probably just not SEEING it - but I can't find where to assign a drive letter (I know how to do it in the older Windows just not in XP). I came across the 4 drive limit when I went through the hardware troubleshooting sequence. FYI - both drives worked prior to upgrading and adding the printer and scanner and the case wasn't opened during the upgrade. This is my home computer, I'm not on a network.

I did try to use the enable/disable function, aside from it being a pain in the *censored* - it did not work to bring the floppy/zip online.

I don't use these drives often - but would like to access them upon occasion.

I appreciate any help you can give me.

Susanseburris......I think what you are refering to is the referance to your system only being able to accept 4 IDE devices ......... For example , 2 hard drives and a cd-rom as well as say a dvd drive .......There is two IDE contollers ( I think ......primary and secondary ) and each will accept 2 devices. The 3.5" floppy has its own 34 pin interface and is not part of the 4. Your media card reader......and your Zip drive......are these USB powered devices......?Do you have other USB devices installed ?

Let us know

dl65