Checking drives (was Re: Disk serial numbers)

[Richard Gaskin]

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