Hide a Drive

1. Go to Start > run > type "diskpart".(Without Quote)
a dos window will appear with following prompt.

DISKPART>
2. Then type "list volume" this will look like it

Volume### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
-------------- ---- ------ --- ----- ---- ------- --
Volume 0 F DC-ROM
Volume 1 C NTFS Partition 7000MB Healthy
Volume 2 D soft NTFS Partition 8000MB Healthy
Volume 3 E ---- NTFS Partition 8000MB Healthy

3. If u wanna hide drive E then type "select volume 3"then a message will appear in same winwods { Volume 3 is the selected volume}

4. Now type " remove letter E" now a message will come { Diskpart Removed the Drive letter }sometime it requires the reboot the computer .

5. Diskpart will remove the letter .Windows XP is not having capabilty to identify the unkown volume.

Don't be afraid about the data, it will remain in the drive. To Come back to the Drive repeat the process . but in 4th step which is shown in this post replace " remove" to "assign"i mean type " assign letter E"

Make the hard drive inaccessible

when double clicked on this drive an error message will open saying it is inaccessible .This is an alternate to hiding a drive and making it inaccisible. Here's how u do that :

Go to the registry editor and navigate to the following place :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
In the right hand pane for the Explorer key, create a new "DWORD" value named ViewNoDrive

Double click the new value and enter it as .......
for hiding A drive set value as 1 , for B its 2 and C its 4 and so on and for Z its 33554432
generally multiply it by 2 for the next alphabet to hide

Once done, reboot or log off and login in again. Then try double clicking the drive you made inaccessible.

You should receive a message stating that the drive cannot be accessed

Change Drive Letters in windows Xp

When you add drives to your computer, such as an extra hard drive, a CD drive, or a storage device that corresponds to a drive, Windows automatically assigns letters to the drives. However, this assignment might not suit your system; for example, you might have mapped a network drive to the same letter that Windows assigns to a new drive. When you want to change drive letters, follow these steps:

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.

2. Under Computer Management, click Disk Management. In the right pane, you’ll see your drives listed. CD-ROM drives are listed at the bottom of the pane.

3. Right-click the drive or device you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

4. Click Change, click Assign the following drive letter, click the drive letter you want to assign, and then click OK.

You will not be able to change the boot or system drive letter in this manner. Many MS-DOS-based and Windows-based programs make references to a specific drive letter (for example, environment variables). If you modify the drive letter, these programs may not function correctly.

Change the icons of Drives

All the Xp users would have been bored by the boring icons in their My Computer panel which are adjacent to the Hard disk drives(C:,D: or whatever drive letter you have).

Here is a simple tweak by which you will be able to change this monotonous icon to anything you like,even your own Picture if you wish

You can put any image in place of one which I have shown,even the picture of your favourite celebrity or your dream caror your own Picture.

Here are the steps you need to follow:


1.First of all the picture you want to use should have .ico extension(if you already have a pic with .ico extension proceed to step 2).Most of the pictures we normally use have extensions like .jpg,.bmp,.png..gif etc, so you first need to convert them to one with .ico extension.This is simple.Just go here and put your original image in the 'Source Image 'section,then click on 'Generate Favicon.ico ' button to get your image with .ico extension.

2.Now go to My Computer.Suppose you want to put this icon in place of your original C: image.

Double click and enter C: .Paste your .ico image file in it.Also create a new text file and in it type the following lines:
[autorun]
ICON=favicon.ico

Remember that 'favicon.ico' in the second line is the name of your image file.If you have an image file with .ico extension by the name of 'abc.ico',then use that in the second line in place of 'favicon.ico'.

3.Now rename this text file as ' autorun.inf ' (without the quotes).

Important Note:How do I rename my text file as autorun.inf ?Ans.Go to Tools->Folder options.Under the View tab uncheck the 'Hide extensions for known file types'.Press apply.Now rename your text file as 'autorun.inf'.

4.Now restart your Pc.You are done.Check out the cool new picture you have just added in your My computer panel.

HIDE ANY DRIVE

1. Go to Start > run > type "diskpart".(Without Quote)a dos window will appear with following prompt.
DISKPART>

2. Then type "list volume" this will look like it
Volume### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info-------------- ---- ------ --- ----- ---- ------- -- Volume 0 F DC-ROMVolume
1 C NTFS Partition 7000MB HealthyVolume
2 D soft NTFS Partition 8000MB HealthyVolume
3 E ---- NTFS Partition 8000MB Healthy


3. If u wanna hide drive E then type "select volume 3"then a message will appear in same winwods { Volume 3 is the selected volume}

4. Now type " remove letter E" now a message will come { Diskpart Removed the Drive letter }sometime it requires the reboot the computer .

5. Diskpart will remove the letter .Windows XP is not having capabilty to identify the unkown volume.


Don't be afraid about the data, it will remain in the drive. To Come back to the Drive repeat the process . but in 4th step which is shown in this post replace " remove" to "assign"i mean type " assign letter E"