How do I get rid of the letter E cd-rom drive? I only need the D. Running MS-DOS 6.

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Far_Relationship_742@reddit

I think we all sometimes only need the D.

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machacker89@reddit

Haha. I see what you did there. You sick and twisted bastard /s

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I've always liked to keep the cdrom drive letter at the end of the alphabet. That way if I ever added more drive letters (new/bigger hard drive), I wouldn't have to re-install all the software that got the CD drive letter hardcodded somewhere during the install process.

If you're interested, add: /L: , to the mscdex.exe line (I usually used Y for the first CD drive)

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Felim_Doyle@reddit

At one time, I may have used O:, for Optical drive, but changed to starting at R:, for ROM or Recordable, followed by S: for the second drive in dual-drive systems.

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garth54@reddit

Systems I've used back in the day got kinda wild by the time I stopped using Win98SE

A: 3.5" HD floppy

B: 5.25" HD floppy

C: to P: for hard drives (trying to reduce waste space due to cluster size, and I didn't trust MS with FAT32 for a while)

R: for ram drive

Y: & X: for optical drives

Z: netware (?) network driver drive (we had a second hand token ring network at home in the late 90s, this drive would automatically be created by the network stuff being loaded, had some basic tool to do smb drive mounting in dos)

U: network user drive

V: network public read-only drive

W: network public read-write drive

S: USB thumb drive

I always felt like I should have made a point of using Q & T before I moved away from 98 (and re-partitioned everything). Could have been fun to use the whole alphabet.

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F1forPotato@reddit

why? If you are really dead set on this, just shut off the machine, open the case, and unplug the cd drive.

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Felim_Doyle@reddit

As I understand it, there is only one physical drive in the machine but it has been configured twice as two different driver letters, which is confusing some software and using additional precious memory unnecessarily.

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Vinylconn@reddit

Then he wouldn’t be able to listen to their fav cd while exploring Encarta!

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Fisi_Matenten@reddit

Thats what she said

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sabudum@reddit

Take out the cable.

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shuanm@reddit

remove /D:MSCD000

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Stcharlesmatt@reddit

Many can survive on just the D. Good luck!

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F1forPotato@reddit

That’s what she said

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lutiana@reddit

Post both your autoexec.bat and config.sys files, from there we can tell who how to do this, but without this info, I am not sure anyone can really help.

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armanddarke@reddit (OP)

Ok just took a picture of it!

config and autoexec

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lutiana@reddit

Remove the "/d:MSCD000" from the last line in your autoexec.bat file, and add "REM" in front of the second last line in your config.sys (so REM DEVICE=\DEV\TOSHIBA.SYS ....., this leaves it in there for future reference, but does not actually load the device driver).

Do you have 2 optical drives in the system?

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armanddarke@reddit (OP)

I'll try that. And nope just one optical drive! I just dont get how an extra driver letter even managed to show up.

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Glidepath22@reddit

I’m betting memaker did it

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armanddarke@reddit (OP)

Probably! Now that you mention it, I did use it once many months ago.

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cristobaldelicia@reddit

personally, I wouldn't be so quick to eliminate it without knowing why exactly it's there. It could be a virtual drive that other programs/games need. It's very handy for old games to run the game CD as a virtual disk, instead of replacing an actual CD in hardware. Other than showing up in boot record, is there anything that it is doing that is a problem? It sounds like you want to get rid of it for no particular reason, I know that kind of approach has bit me on the butt many times. Find out why it's there, THEN try removing it.

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Korenchkin12@reddit

I think the 220 means port,and maybe 1 means slave or master,so i think both drivers load for the same drive...if i remember correctly,i did not use those parameters and let autodetect do its magic,but it has been decades :)

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armanddarke@reddit (OP)

Hallelujah!! It worked!! And also fixed another problem I had with a game cd installation where it couldn't "read the disc" and this is why, I guess it got all mixed up not knowing kind of drive situation I had! Thanks man!! 😎

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TerminalJunk@reddit

You can edit the line in autoexec.bat that loads mscdex.exe - delete the reference to MSCD001.

Could also edit config.sys to only load the one cdrom driver but would still need to edit autoexec.bat otherwise it'll throw an error over the missing driver.

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armanddarke@reddit (OP)

Took a picture of my config and autoexec. Let me know what's going on there!

auto and config

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Korenchkin12@reddit

Seems like classic(similar to current time) problem adding loadhigh and forgetting old entry,or something adding again to load because it won't recognize loadhigh line

So i would keep loadhigh and delete the one without loadhigh(so you have 640kb low ram free as possible)

Basically config loads driver(twice now),seems for the same port 220 and then mscdex adds driver later when autoexec runs

You can definitely backup those files and edit those two lines corresponding in both config and autoexec,nothing horrible,just watch for same identifier(you can change that if you want,but must be same in both)

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TerminalJunk@reddit

Sorry, didn't see your reply...

Glad it's sorted and a thumbs up to the other posters for helping too.

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