I Hate Computers

[Minnesota scroller]

It sounds like either you lost your USB driver or, more likely, your USB driver got corrupted.

[Old Dude]

Betty...

I guess the saga continues. I have long been amazed by the time that computers save us, and then they take it all back by deciding to throw a tantrum.

MS/MSPro is a Memory Stick. Here's a link to the Newegg page so you can see what they look like.
Newegg.com - memory stick
It sounds like your computer has an MS port and that there's a device in it...XP will recognize it and provide access through
Windows Explorer.

Drive letters aren't permanently assigned. A and B are generally reserved for floppy discs, although they aren't used much anymore, and C is generally reserved for the primary boot device. All others, D through Z, are assigned by the operating system to devices in the order it encounters them. Normally this doesn't change, so it looks like they're permanently assigned. But you can change them, which does make the assignment permanent. Anyway, the fact that the drive letters are now different I think has something to do with the way the operating system came up the first time you started it after using the recovery disc...did you use the recovery disc? Or maybe a driver got hosed (ie, your USB driver) causing XP to see the devices in a different order.

A word about Ghost. It doesn't cure existing problems, but it's good to get ready in advance to use it. Ghost makes an "image" of the disc...an analogy is the way a scanner captures a document or photo. It just passes from one end to the other capturing what it encounters...doesn't know if it's a document or a picture of aunt belle. Ghost goes through the hard drive sector by sector, track by track, saving the bits as it encounters them without regard for what they mean from a logical standpoint (ie, file names, etc...ghost knows nothing about that). You get all dressed up to have your picture taken. Well, you get your hard drive all dressed up, free of errors, nice and clean, and have Ghost take a picture of it. Then if the drive ever gets messed up (virus or one of the myriad other ways) you just slam your image back on and you're clean and green. That's its purpose. Keep in mind that changes you make to your data after the image is made won't be there if you have to slam, so you still need that external hard drive you plan to use.

Cheers.