Error:Windows has allocated a drive letter to the U3 drive that is already taken by another drive

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Error:Windows has allocated a drive letter to the U3 drive that is already taken by another drive on your machine or there are no more drive letters available on this machine.  Try disconnecting any network drives that you have connected to your computer and restart U3 by double-clicking LaunchU3.exe or the U3 System CD-ROM icon.  __Once the U3 Launchpad is running, you can reconnect the network drives,(I am the administrator).

I may have an answer for this issue.

I downloaded and ran as administrator a free utility call “usbdeview”.  It allow me to see all of my usb device.  I

used it to uninstall all devices that were not currently connected to my computer.  I also uninstall some of the

generic usb hubs it was showing.  After rescanning for hardware change and after unplugging and replugging my usb

keyboard back in I was able to get the U3 launcher on my cruzer to work correctly.



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Excellent!!!  Thank you.

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I have some additional information in the first solution does not work.

The Second seems to have been a permanent fix as the problem has not come back yet. Ok so if the first fix I tried does not work for you, try the following.

I copied the Launchpad.zip file into another directory on the computer and ran the LaunchU3.exe from there.  Initially I received the same error about Windows has allocated a drive letter to the U3 drive that is already taken by another drive on your
machine or there are no more drive letters available on this machine. Try disconnecting any network drives that you have connected to your computer and restart U3 by double-clicking LaunchU3.exe or the U3 System CD-ROM icon. Once
the U3 Launchpad is running, you can reconnect the network drives.  Even though the message came up the u3
launcher did start.  After ejecting the U3 and rebooting the computer I have been able to launch the U3 software every
time without the error showing up.

As far as using the compatibility mode, I am NOT.  It has continue to work even when the system has been shut down and rebooted with the key still attached.

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After reading this thread and getting ideas I used a slightly different method to solve the issue.  After inserting the SanDisk (and getting the error message) I went to Disk Management (My Computer/Manage) and changed the pseudo CD ROM drive letter to a higher value (I used Y).  After ejecting the flashdrive and reinserting it, the drive letter stayed at Y w/o any error message.  (If it matters, my OS is Windows Vista 64-bit)

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After playing with the process described in my prior posting, I have some further instructions.

Insert the U3 drive.  If you have LaunchU3 installed, you will get the login screen.  Don’t respond to it.

Right-click on the taskbar and select Task manager.

Select the Processes tab.  If there is a ‘Launchpad.exe’ listed, select it an click the ‘End Process’ button.  Click ‘OK’ to the warning.

Now it is safe to change the drive letter of the pseudo CD ROM drive to whatever you like as mentioned in my prior post.

Remove the U3 drive.  When you re-insert it (with or without a reboot), it will default to the drive you selected.

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this does not work

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The last entry to this thread was 4 years ago! :dizzy_face:

Do you even have one of the older flash drives with U3 on it? U3 was dropped a long time ago.