Checking drives (was Re: Disk serial numbers)

[Ken Ray]

Boy, that's weird, Richard... I have both a CD-ROM and CD/RW (two
separate drives) in the "D:" and "E:" positions, and I don't get the XP
error dialog coming up when I do a shell().

I'm wondering why *you* get one...

I'm running XP with Service Pack 1... perhaps that's part of the key?

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/ 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: metacard-admin at lists.runrev.com 
> [mailto:metacard-admin at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf Of Richard Gaskin
> Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 2:17 AM
> To: metacard at lists.runrev.com
> Subject: Checking drives (was Re: Disk serial numbers)
> 
> 
> Ken Ray wrote:
> 
> > Hey, Richard! You have something there... if you do a shell 
> to switch 
> > to a drive (like "D:") and there's no media in the drive, 
> it's return 
> > "The device not ready." under XP, and it DOESN'T throw up a 
> dialog box 
> > in your face!
> 
> Not so fast:  I'm finding mixed results with "shell(<driveLetter>)"
> 
> Here's a matrix of results:
> 
> Drive type                Function call   result
> ----------------------    -------------   --------
> Hard disk partition       shell("C:")     no err
> 
> Hard disk partition       shell("D:")     no err
> 
> Memory stick              shell("E:")     XP err dialog
> 
> DVD drive                 shell("F:")     no err
> 
> CD-ROM drive              shell("G:")     XP err dialog
> 
> Removable memory card     shell("I:")     XP err dialog
> 
> 
> Questions:
> 
> 1. Is there a way to query a drive that doesn't require 
> low-level calls to the API in XP that won't throw an error 
> requiring user interaction?
> 
> 2. Am I correct in assuming that this will affect thousands 
> of applications and an uncountable number of DOS batch 
> scripts worldwide?
> 
> 3. Is Microsoft familiar with the term "backwardly compatible"?
> 
> 
> -- 
>  Richard Gaskin 
>  Fourth World Media Corporation
>  Developer of WebMerge 2.2: Publish any database on any site  
> ___________________________________________________________
>  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com
>  Tel: 323-225-3717                       AIM: FourthWorldInc
> 
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