This issue came about because I needed to image some Atari ST floppy disks and the only OS that would run the specialised Makedisk App was XP. I loaded XP in a Vitrual Box and then plugged in my USB floppy drive and mounted it. The floppy drive then mounted as B: . It did this becasue I had a virtual floppy disk as part of the vitual machine so the external floppy disk drive then took the next letter which is B:

Makedisk would probably work with B: drive but annoyed me. I thenshutdown the virtual machine and then rebooted. The USB floppy drive still shows as B: because it is registered in the windows registry.

My solution

This issue is not just related to virtual machines nor XP but I have verified the solutions on XP. This assumes your USB floppy drive come up as B:

• Unplug your USB floppy drive
• Make sure the floppy disk (A: drive) is disabled in the BIOS or Virtual Machine control panel
• Load Windows XP (Virtual Machine or real)
• Open regedit
• Goto

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

• Delete Pane/Key found:

  \DosDevices\B:

• Plug in USB floppy drive and it will appear as A:

Links

• Change the letter of external floppy drive? - Tech Support Forum - Registry fix similiar to above
• How to change floppy drive letters? Disk Management doesn't show floppy drives.. - Windows XP - Registry fix similiar to above