Virtual optical drive never assigned to the first available letter.

[Shodan]

I have a bunch of old games in the .iso format and they require the .iso file to be virtually mounted in order to work.

However, the games are sensitive to the drive letter and whenever I mount one of those .iso files for the first time since boot up (I only have a C drive), they don't get assigned to D right away (and they should because D is the first available letter) and instead, it seems to be F every time.

A workaround I discovered is ejecting the .iso once I see that it's assigned to the F letter, then mounting it again for it to turn into E, then repeat the procedure one more time to get to D. When I mount a different .iso file later, it goes back to F and I have to do the same thing all over again.

This is incredibly annoying to have to do every time. Is there any way for virtual drives to always be assigned to the first available letter (and to continue in A-Z order when multiple are mounted at once), as well as always reset back to that first letter once no drives are mounted anymore? Isn't this how it always worked anyway, if I remember correctly? I'm on Windows 11 Pro, up-to-date, not sure when I started noticing this issue.

[emoticorpse]

What is D: right now? Try setting that up to be like X or Z or something do what D: will be available.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Map it yourself as a Drive Letter way down the line; like R, S, T; something like that.

That's what I do with certain USB Drives as well, so they can't get swapped around as D, E; etc.

[Shodan]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

What is D: right now? Try setting that up to be like X or Z or something do what D: will be available.

Like I said in the original post, I only have a C drive which is my main and only SSD with Windows and everything I have on the entire PC, no other drives of any kind. I plugged in a USB stick and an external HDD a few times, but that has no relevance now.

So, when I open the File Explorer, the only thing I see (since it's the only thing that exists) is the C drive, no hidden drives or anything like that.

The thing is, if there were actually any other drives occupying the letter D, then how come that when I mount an .iso file and it gets assigned to F, ejecting and mounting it again assigns it to E, then after ejecting and mounting once more, it's finally assigned to D as it should be initially? So, D clearly cannot be already occupied by something else then, that's why I'm confused and why I'm posting this. Makes no sense.

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Map it yourself as a Drive Letter way down the line; like R, S, T; something like that.

That's what I do with certain USB Drives as well, so they can't get swapped around as D, E; etc.

Would that work permanently if it's not a specific device, but just generic virtual mounting and if I sometimes mount one .iso, sometimes another .iso, sometimes a bunch of them at once and so on?

Basically, I want the first .iso I mount, regardless of which one it is, to be assigned to D since that's the first available letter, then the second one to be E, the third one F and so on. Also, say I eject D and E and only F remains, then I eject F too, the next one I mount should be D all over again and so on.

Also, didn't Windows always assign virtual drives to the first available letter and continue in alphabetic order for any additional virtual drives, then reset back to the first available letter as soon as all are unmounted, as I explained in the paragraph above? I think this is how it always worked? I don't remember it being almost random like that with this weird and tedious workaround to push it back to the first available letter.

Basically:

As a test, just mounted 3 random .iso files in a row (none previously mounted, just my main and only C drive) and the first one was F, the second one G and the third one... D? How does this make any sense? G is right after F, but then it went back to D? Why did it even start with F to begin with? Ejected all 3 of them, tried again and the first one was D, the second one E (both as it should be), but then the third one was G? Why was F skipped now?

[andreasaspenberg575]

think it is related to the mounting program, which for some reason does not mount d by default. think you should be able to manually specify what drive letter to use.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Go into the Virutal Drive software and change the Driver Letter to be static. Always assigned whether or not any media is mounted. That would help avoid issues. Or if loading multiples like how you said you had done, you can change the drive letter for the mount if really need too, If it's not needed to do that, like say for a mounted game ISO for example where Windows Registry is going to look for that to be ran off the same driver letter all the time, then you shouldn't need to worry how the mounted driver letters end up.

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Go into the Virutal Drive software and change the Driver Letter to be static. Always assigned whether or not any media is mounted. That would help avoid issues. Or if loading multiples like how you said you had done, you can change the drive letter for the mount if really need too, If it's not needed to do that, like say for a mounted game ISO for example where Windows Registry is going to look for that to be ran off the same driver letter all the time, then you shouldn't need to worry how the mounted driver letters end up.

Probably want to ask what software he's using for the virtual drive and if using multiple things. Sometimes those programs install like a drivers layer or something like that which might complicate things.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

It shouldn't complicate anything; Usually you just go into the software and change the driver letter if needed. Very simple. The driver is needed to make it show up and work; that's a given normal for those kinds of apps. Nothing to do with how the drive letters are assigned or functions.

[andreasaspenberg575]

that is certainly a good point. i myself use deamon tools, though i burn disc images from my own discs, just to use them on a pc that does not have a disc drive.

[Shodan]

I don't use any kind of software like Daemon Tools or any other software that's supposed to do what File Explorer does and never did on this PC, I just double-click .iso files and Windows natively mounts them as drives, nothing special.

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by Shodan:

I don't use any kind of software like Daemon Tools or any other software that's supposed to do what File Explorer does and never did on this PC, I just double-click .iso files and Windows natively mounts them as drives, nothing special.

You don't want to use some freeware to do that? Like Wincdemu?

If I'm not mistaken this page https://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/tutorials/persist/ is kind of what your problem is?

[Shodan]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Originally posted by Shodan:

I don't use any kind of software like Daemon Tools or any other software that's supposed to do what File Explorer does and never did on this PC, I just double-click .iso files and Windows natively mounts them as drives, nothing special.

You don't want to use some freeware to do that? Like Wincdemu?

If I'm not mistaken this page https://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/tutorials/persist/ is kind of what your problem is?

Well, I don't recall having such a weird issue ever since I've been using Windows, which would be 98 and everything since then except Vista and 8.

How does it make sense that when I mount 4 .iso files in a row, they get assigned to D, E, then G, then back to F? Or F, then after ejecting and mounting again, E, then after ejecting and mounting yet again, finally D?

I mean, I don't want one specific .iso file to always be assigned to D regardless of all others. I just want it to be how I always remember it being on Windows, which is whenever you plug in something like a USB stick, an external HDD, or mount an .iso, etc., it gets assigned to the first available letter (in my case, D) and continues in A-Z order, then resets back to D once all are ejected. I'm just curious why it's suddenly acting like this.