Summary :
- Parallels For Mac Change Drive Letter Format
- Parallels Change Drive Letter
- Parallels For Mac Change Drive Letter Size
- Parallels For Mac Change Drive Letters
- Parallels For Mac Change Drive Letter
Is one of your drive letters missing? What should you do? How to get the missing drive letters back? This post lists several ways to help you solve the drive letter is missing in Windows issue. For instance, try MiniTool Software to unhide partition.
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Drive Letter Is Missing In Windows
Driver letter missing? I just upgraded to Windows 10. When I open This PC, my drive letters are missing from Windows Explorer. Now, what should we do when drive letter is missing in Windows?
- Mac computers: How to change a Virtual Machine path into a drive letter One Legacy user explained: I use Legacy on my Macbook running OSX 10.9.5 and Parallels Build 9.0.24251 and Windows XP SP3. I have several others that use Parallels 10 and OSX 10.9.5 and Windows 7 64bit. A few are using OSX 10.x and which requires Parallels 10.
- Change Windows user account password using Command Line Tools (if a user lost a password). Set custom Asset ID for Windows virtual machines to mark virtual machines in management tools or to pass some information from Mac to Windows. Control Parallels Desktop upgrades using the Parallels My Account web app.
Let’s drive in.
Parallels Parallels makes it simple for customers to use and access the applications and files they need on any device or operating system.
What Is a Drive Letter?
Here, let’s start with what a drive letter is.
A drive letter is a single alphabetic character A through Z that can be assigned to a physical disk partition, floppy disk drive, removable device, CD-ROM, or even a mapping network drive in the computer.
Generally, drive letter A: is allocated to the first floppy disk drive, B: to the second floppy disk drive, and C: to the first disk partition where the running Windows is installed. The remaining drive letters can be assigned to other disk partitions, removable devices and mapping network drives in accordance with actual demands.
Related: Drive letter assignment.
Once a letter is allocated to a disk partition or mapping network drive (letter for removable devices is changeable), we can say it is fixed unless we change or remove it in Disk Management, Diskpart, or some third-party programs.
However, one day we may find these fixed drive letters are missing in either Windows Explorer or Disk Management, which brings much inconvenience or even makes the partition inaccessible.
Therefore, we wrote this post and introduce 5 different situations where drive letter disappears, and at the same time show ways to get the missing letter back.
Drive Letter Missing from Windows Explorer or My Computer
Generally, after we open the Windows Explorer, we can see the following scenario:
Every local drive and every removable storage device has its own letter, like C: for the first drive, A: for floppy drive, and E for DVD drive. But one day we suddenly found all drive letters have disappeared. This is very strange, though it brings nearly no influence on system running and data access:
What’s wrong? Where are these drive letters going? How can we get these lost drive letters back in several steps? Let’s deal with these questions one by one.
The most probable reason may be that you or someone have hidden the drive letters via settings in Windows Folder Options. To fix this issue, please take the following steps (take Windows 7 for example):
- Go to one of partitions.
- Click 'Organize' tab.
- Choose 'Folder and search options' from the drop-down menu to get the Folder Options.
Then, select the 'View' tab and scroll down the sliding handle to the middle until the 'Show drive letters' appears. With checking this option and click 'OK,' we can see the missing drive letters in Windows Explorer again.
If you now know the reason for missing drive letter from Windows Explorer or My Computer as well as the solution, it’s time to know why drive letter disappeared from Disk Management.
Drive Letter Disappears in Disk Management
As we know, Disk Management is a Windows snap-in partitioning program designed to help Windows users manage disk and partitions. In Disk Management, every drive should have a drive letter, but sometimes we may find one or some of drives lose their letters like this:
Here we can see the 188.38GB NTFS partition does not have a drive letter. Generally, if a partition is not allocated with a letter in Disk Management, it will be invisible in Windows Explorer:
As a result, we are unable to access files saved in it directly, and all programs relying on the drive letter will be unavailable. Therefore, under this situation, users would be more eager to get the missing drive letter back.
Then, let’s see how.
Steps to Get Missing Drive Letter Back in Disk Management
In Windows Disk Management, the function 'Change Drive Letter and Paths,' which appears in the right-click menu of a partition (Windows calls it volume), can help add, change, and remove drive letter:
If 'Remove' is selected and applied, the letter of the target drive will be removed and disappear in Disk Management, which is one of the reasons for losing drive letter.
On the contrary, by clicking 'Add,' we can assign a letter to the selected drive. Therefore, when a certain drive loses its letter, we can try adding a drive letter in this way. But for successful adding, you may need to pay some attention to the following tip:
Tip: You’d better assign the drive with the original letter. If not, programs relying on the original letter might not work correctly. If the original letter has been taken by new drive, change the letter of the new drive to another available letter and then allocate the released one for the target drive.
In addition, partitions that are hidden via special technologies (set partition type ID to 0x17, for example) are always having no letter.
If a partition is hidden, the function 'Change Drive Letter and Paths' for this partition in Disk Management will be unavailable (grayed out). At this time, the best solution is to unhide the partition by using third party program.
If you failed to assign a letter for your drive in Disk Management, now try using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free edition to unhide partition, which is a freeware for Windows home users.
Partition Wizard Makes Unhide Partitions Easily
Step 1. Run and launch the freeware to get its main interface.
Step 2. Select the hidden partition and click 'Unhide Partition' from the left action panel.
Step 3. Select a letter for the partition and click 'OK.'
Step 4. Click 'Apply' button to apply the change if the missing drive appears in Partition Wizard.
When MiniTool Partition Wizard shows it succeeded in applying the operation, letter of the partition will be visible in Disk Management, and the missing drive will also appear in Windows Explorer.
After getting a basic understanding of the second scenario, next, let’s see the third scenario.
Drive Letter Missing from the List of Available Drive Letters
We have mentioned that it is very easy to add or change drive letter for certain partition in Disk Management. However sometimes you may find a strange situation where a specific letter is not shown in the list of available drive letters and no other device has that letter assigned.
The most probable reason may be that this letter is reserved for a removable device that was removed or is hidden.
Under this situation, if you want to assign the very letter for the specific drive, you may need to make some modifications in Registry. However, as a slight mistake in Registry may cause data loss or system crash, it is very necessary to backup the registry before doing any modification.
Then, launch Regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMMountedDevices, and see if a device is shown as being mounted at the specific drive letter.
Next, right-click the drive letter that you want and choose 'Rename' from the right-click menu to change the letter to any other unused letter, which will free up the selected one.
After reboot, you can add the released letter for your drive. Next, let’s see the fourth reason for losing drive letters.
Drive Letter Disappears after Reboot
When browsing Windows Forum and Windows Seven Forums (2 well known technical forums about Windows), I found a lot of people talking about the problem that drive letters are disappearing after every reboot. Of course, the same issue can be found in other websites or forums since this is a quite common error.
This is my story.
The following screenshot shows the 465GB NTFS partition on Disk 1 has the letter E:
However, after every reboot, the letter will be missing:
If I want to use the partition normally, I have to assign drive letter every time, which is so troublesome.
After lots of searches on Google, I found this error often occurs on Western Digital hard disk, so it may be a bug of WD hard disk. And someone gives the suggestion: fill the disk with zero. MiniTool Partition Wizard, a freeware for Windows home users, can help complete this task in very simple steps.
However, before zero filling the hard disk, we need to backup all desired files, because this will erase both file system and data. For steps to backup a disk, please see Copy Disk. After the backup has been created, we can wipe the disk without any worry.
How to Erase Disk with MiniTool Partition Wizard
Firstly, run and launch the freeware to get its main window.
Here we can see all recognized hard disks. To wipe a disk, please select the target disk and click 'Wipe Disk' feature from the left action pane to get the following interface:
There are 5 wiping methods in total, including Fill Sectors with Zero, Fill Sectors with One, Fill Sectors with Zero & One, DoD 5220.22-M (3 passes), and DoD 5220.28-STD (7 passes). From top to bottom, erasing time increases but the effect is better and better. Then, click 'OK' to go back to the main interface:
Finally, click the 'Apply' button.
Once the disk is erased, we can recreate partitions in either Disk Management or Partition Wizard. The new drive letters would stay in their original place next time you reboot the computer.
Now if you have known how to deal with the issue that drive letter is missing after Windows reboot, let’s see the last situation.
Drive Letter Missing in Map Network Drive
Drive mapping is how operating systems like Windows associate a local drive letter (A through Z) with a shared storage area to another computer over a network. However, these local drive letters may disappear in Windows Explorer without us knowing exact reasons.
Parallels For Mac Change Drive Letter Format
After a series of findings, we find 2 possibilities:
- When mapping the drive, users do not check the option 'Reconnect at logon.'
- Use the Work online without synchronizing changes over a virtual private network (VPN) connection.
Now that reasons are found, solutions are available now. For the first situation, users just need to remap the network drive and check 'Reconnect at login':
For the second situation, please obtain the latest service pack for Windows, or apply Hotfix to the system that is experiencing the problem.
Bottom Line
Is your drive letter missing or lost under Windows? Have you found the exact reason and corresponding solutions? If you have found, can you please share them with us if they are different from those introduced in this post? If you haven’t found good solutions, this post may be useful.
1 Introduction
Using Parallels, you can run Mendix Studio Pro on your Mac device using a Windows virtual machine.
Studio Pro does not run under Parallels on Apple Silicon Macs, such as the M1.
To start making Mendix native mobile apps on your Mac, follow this how-to.
Parallels Change Drive Letter
This how-to will teach you how to do the following:
- Configure your Windows virtual machine for Mendix Studio Pro
- Run a Mendix app on a test device using your Windows virtual machine
- Make changes to your app, then view those changes on your test device
For a deep-dive look into installing Studio Pro on a Mac, check out this video:
2 Prerequisites
Before starting this how-to, make sure you have completed the following prerequisites:
- Install Parallels Desktop Pro Edition, install Windows when prompted by Parallels, and create a Windows virtual machine (Parallels Desktop Pro Edition is necessary for Mendix’s network features to work)
- Install Mendix Studio Pro on your Windows virtual machine
3 Configuring Your Windows Virtual Machine for Mendix Studio Pro
To configure your Windows virtual machine to work with Mendix Studio Pro, follow these steps:
Open your Parallels Control Center:
Click the gear symbol to open the Configuration Panel.
Navigate to the Hardware tab, and select Network from the left panel:
Make sure Source is set to Shared Network.
Make sure that both the Inbound bandwidth and Outbound bandwidth show unlimited.
If this is not the case, either enable Network Conditioner and set it to a profile that does not limit bandwidth, or click the Options tab then the Optimization pane and set Resource usage to No limit.
In the Parallels drop-down menu, select Preferences:
Navigate to the Network tab, and select Shared from the left panel:
Click the + button and add two ports: one for 8080 and one for 8083, both forwarded to your Windows virtual machine (the 8083 port is only necessary for developing native mobile apps):
After adding those two ports, your Port forwarding rules should look like this:
Congratulations! You have successfully configured port forwarding to enable testing Mendix apps with your Mac.
4 Viewing Your App on Your Testing Device
Whenever you create or open a Mendix app in Mendix Studio Pro, be sure to do so from a mapped drive instead of a network drive.
If you experience issues connecting with the Make It Native app, make sure your firewall is not preventing a connection. For information resolving Windows Defender and other firewall-related issues, see the Error: Unable to Load Script section of Troubleshoot Common Native Mobile Issues
Read the tips and steps below to view your app on your testing device:
Correct mapped drives will always have a letter at the start of their file location:
Incorrect network drives will always have ** at the start of their file location:
When running your app on your test device, you cannot use the QR code within Mendix Studio Pro’s View Mobile App dialog box:
Instead, you must enter your Mac’s IP address into your Make It Native app. To run your app on your test device, follow the steps below:
- Make sure your test device and Mac are on the same Wi-Fi network.
- Place your cursor over your Wi-Fi symbol in your system tray, then and click while holding Option to see your Mac’s advanced network information. You will see your IP Address in this drop-down menu.
In your Make It Native app’s Host field, type {your IP address}:8080:
Tap Launch to view your app.
Parallels For Mac Change Drive Letter Size
Congratulations! You have successfully viewed your app on a test device.
Parallels For Mac Change Drive Letters
5 Viewing Changes to Your App on Your Testing Device
For information on how to change to your app and then see that change on your device, see the Viewing Changes to Your App on Your Testing Device section in Get Started with Native Mobile.