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Anon

[WIN7] W7 64 XP Virtual Machine CMD prompt can't see USB Drive

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I have a USB drive set up in Integration Options to be available to Windows XP virtual machine under Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

Windows XP explorer can see the USB drive. However, my batch files, which back up certain Win16 apps data to the USB drive cannot function due to an "invalid drive" error. Sure enough, the CMD window cannot see any drives other than A: C: and D: (the latter being the CD drive).

I need to find a way to automate backup of certain data that gets updated several times daily.

Prior to upgrading from Win XP to Win 7 64, this batch file would copy some database directories to a USB drive letter Z:. The drive is still assigned Z:, shows up as "Z on QUADCORE2" in Windows virtual XP explorer, but in an invalid drive if I try to access it from virtual XP's command prompt, which is why my backup.bat file fails.

I Googled the problem extensively, but was unable to find any discussion about this particular problem of how to access a drive in CMD that is accessible only in Explorer.

Any ideas?
rfnut
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join:2002-04-27
Fisher, IL

rfnut

Premium Member

Re: [WIN7] W7 64 XP Virtual Machine CMD prompt can't see USB Dri

while picture indicates Z onQUADCORE2, I do not see any ":" in there. Is it mounted without a drive letter as a network share named "Z onQUADCORE"

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Anon

I noticed that pipe symbol too. My next approach was to treat it as a network drive, then:
\\TSCLIENT\Z: however, that also resulted in an invalid drive specification. This is a head scratcher.

quaker
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join:2001-12-27
Rocky River, OH

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as someone else said it doesn't appear that your "Z on QUADCORE2" is mapped to a drive letter. go to your disk management to see if windows has your usb mounted and from there you can change the drive letter to something else. otherwise i would just share the usb drive from the host pc and just mount the remote share in the virtual XP.
rfnut
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Fisher, IL

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Since it looks like a share, not a drive, map by name, but since there is a space, use \\tsclient\"Z onQUADCORE2". or remove the space in the name of the drive.

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Anon

When I try to map the network drive, the system says the network path could not be found. Yet, when I double-click on that network drive icon, it opens and I can access the data within. XP virtual behaves very differently than a real PC with regard to attached drives and networks.

Tried modifying this command as follows:

XCOPY c:\Mymwin2\mymdata\*.* \\tsclient\"Z onQUADCORE2\Mymwin2\mymdata" /D/Y

and got an invalid drive spec error again.

This whole mess is making me really wish there were some replacement for Managing Your Money that could import MYMDATA files and is compatible with modern Windows systems.

I like to automate my backups, but if I cannot access connected drives, it makes the process become a manual one, which is not likely to get done regularly.

cmcasey79
join:2000-12-10
Allen Park, MI

cmcasey79

Member

to map the drive, from the command prompt on the virtual machine, try:

net use z: \\quadcore2\z /persistent:yes

If that works, your original script would run. The command prompt really doesn't handle network paths and stuff, so this should get around it.
rfnut
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Fisher, IL

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I assume you also tried without the \\tsclient suach as \\"z on..."
Aranarth
join:2011-11-04
Stanwood, MI

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are you using xp mode?

if you are go to the USB pull down at the top of your screen and turn on USB FD 2.0.

You get a weird pop-up but choose yes, the drive will disappear from win7 and show up in xp mode, to give it back go back to usb and choose release.

Note I do not know if you can force the drive letter to change to x: or not. If not edit your script.

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Okay here's my results with that command:

I'm trying to avoid adding complexity to this process, such as remembering to go to the USB menu and select from the half dozen or so thumb and hard drives attached to this PC (they don't show up with volume label--just a bunch of "U3 Cruzer Micro" entries and I must guess which one is my Z drive).

It seems that accessing a drive that has been made accessible by the integration features settings should not be so difficult in a command shell.
rfnut
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For the fun of it I just installed the xpmode to see what is up. I see usb drives are mounted as names like yours. My assumption of the named drive is wrong, sorta. You do not need to mount as Z:. It is already Z. Just Z. No ":" no name. \\tsclient\Z\... Included is a screenshot showing how it looks and a proper copy which did copy to the usb drive as shown in explorer "\\tsclient\F\temp.

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Anon

BINGO! You got it! Thank you so much. I never imagined that dropping the ":" from the drive letter was valid under this condition, but it works.
rfnut
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join:2002-04-27
Fisher, IL

rfnut

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Glad to see it is working now