Favorite volume will not mount to desired drive letter

[Whitefish]

In Windows 7, I have created a favorite volume (add mounted volume to favorites) with drive letter E:
However upon start it will auto mount to drive letter D (which is the first available drive letter). No matter how often I repeat the above it will not mount to E: unless I mount it manually. Below is the contents of the Favorite Volumes.xml file:

<veracrypt>
<favorites>
<volume mountpoint="E:\" id="user-content-0230B15889482FC26AC3ADD3B353673B25EEF949ABBED1DF1F6079B325CDE067" pkcs5="1" truecryptmode="0">\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0</volume>
</favorites>
</veracrypt>

[Enigma2Illusion]

Uncheck the "Mount all device-hosted VeraCrypt volumes" in the Settings > Preferences since the will auto-mount to the first available drive letter.

See Auto-Mount Devices section in the link below.

https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Main%20Program%20Window.html

[Whitefish]

If I uncheck this option, Windows will not try to mount the volume during startup and thus I will have to do it manually (which I was trying to avoid). The chapter you are referring to says that drives will be mounted to drive letters starting with the one selected in the main window. While in the past I found that to be true, I have the problem that even if I select drive "E" in the main window it will nonetheless mount to drive "D" during the next system boot. Any other ideas?

[Enigma2Illusion]

If you are using VeraCrypt for system encryption, then you can add the volumes to System Favorites using the same password and PIM value that you used on the system encryption in order to automatically mount the volumes to the specific drive letter assuming driver letter is available.

https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/System%20Favorite%20Volumes.html

Otherwise, you will have to manually mount the volumes using Favorites or manually selecting the drives/partitions to mount to the specific drive letter.

https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Favorite%20Volumes.html

[Whitefish]

It is not a system volume but an entire partition of an external drive. In the past I was able to have the volume mounted by ticking the "Mount all device-hosted VeraCrypt volumes" option. Upon boot it would prompt me for the password and mount the drive to the drive letter that was previously selected in the main window. Ever since a system reinstall I cannot get it to mount to that drive. It will mount to the first available drive letter (in this case D:) no matter what I do. Anything else that can be set? Thank you!