>>Is there a way for me to force a physical drive (hard drive or cd drive) to be a specific drive letter instead of the one assigned by Windows?
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Right click on My Compter and select Manage.
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Click on Disk Management
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Right click on the HD or CD and select Change drive letter and Path.... Windows will tell you if it's possible or not to change drive letter for that particular device.

I was so close! Thanks for that.