HijackThis Log

Hi Stella, My goodness, if you want my honest answer, I have no idea what is causing your weird folder issue. Can you pinpoint anything you did just prior to this occurrence? Hard Drives are fickle creatures, it could be dying, so I would immediately backup all your important data in case that is the reason for this odd showing in your attachment. Others will come by to offer assistance, but in the meantime please backup everything valuable. Best regards,

Hi catchinstars, that is indeed very weird. The first thing I would try is to access the drive while not booted under Windows XP. There are several choices:

Try booting a Linux "Live" CD like Puppy Linux or one of the other bootable CD packages like EBCD, UBCD or best of all, UBCD4WIN. See if you can access the DVD drives and USB devices that way. If yes then Windows is the culprit. If no then I'd say you have developed hardware problems.

See this post by Happyrck on GeeksToGo for Puppy Linux:
http://www.geekstogo.com/…..=findpost&am…21#entry1197721
Ignore the stuff about saving data, you just need the info on downloading and creating the Puppy Linux bootable CD. Then you boot it and see if the external drive shows correclty or not.

These two are iso images you download then use your burner software to create the bootable CD from:
EBCD
Ultimate Boot CD

This one you have to build on your system and you need a Windows XP Home, Pro or MCE CD. Takes a bit of work to set it up but it's not difficult and when you boot it, you have Windows XP:
Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
How to build UBCD4WIN

Thanks a lot for the replies! I appreciate the help. The hard drive is working okay now, but I turned it off just in case. Before any of this happened, I couldn't access the drive, but once I unplugged it for a while, it seemed to be working okay. Then all of this happened… so I turned it off again for a few hours, and then it worked again just fine. Now it's been turned off for a long time and I'm not sure what to do next. I think I'm going to buy a new one tomorrow and transfer all my files, but then I won't really know what to do with this drive. As I said, it's only one year old… so it shouldn't be dying. Do you think formatting it would help at all?

catchinstars wrote: I think I'm going to buy a new one tomorrow and transfer all my files, but then I won't really know what to do with this drive. As I said, it's only one year old… so it shouldn't be dying. Do you think formatting it would help at all?

That is a good idea for you to buy another HD and transfer all your data onto the new one.

Hard Drives one year old failing is not unexpected. They fail after years, never fail, or fail when they are only days old…There is no yard stick as to when they die.

Have you thought about backup? Is your data backed up?

I will not go into image backup here, but if you are interested, post back and I will guide you to the/one of the most important part/s of safe computering.

kind regards,

Hi catchinstars,

Wow, what a relief to find that you again have access, if only intermittently, to your valuable files.

You and the folks helping so far are right on track…. get that data transferred to a fresh drive!

If you can do so within Windows, I see no problem with doing so.
If not, Ztruker's recommendations are excellent.

The defining strategy needs to be "as little work as possible" to get those files saved elsewhere.

As to trouble-shooting and future use, that should remain a secondary consideration.
Problems could arise from faulty power supply, faulty USB wire and connector, or primary failure of the drive itself.
If a swap-out of power supply or USB wiring results in reliable performance, then continued use of the drive would be sensible.

As to problems with the drive itself, there are certainly Drive Health utilities that may tell you more, but may not give you reliable information if the drive is intermittently functioning well at time of your testing.

Any further projections about the drive would be in the realm of "guesses" at this point, unless you can provide additional information about recent software installation or updates, or specific usage that relates in time to the onset of the problem.

Otherwise, I'd be most suspicious of Heat, power supply, USB connectors/wires.


Best Regards

Hello Catchinstars. After researching on your problem a bit, I found out that one cause of the problem is due to a corruption in the default Windows fonts. Please use the instructions from here to reinstall / replace the fonts and reboot your computer. See if the problem persists.

Let us know how it goes though. Good Luck.

– Mohit

Hello Catchinstars. After researching on your problem a bit, I found out that one cause of the problem is due to a corruption in the default Windows fonts. Please use the instructions from here to reinstall / replace the fonts and reboot your computer. See if the problem persists.

Let us know how it goes though. Good Luck.

– Mohit

Sounds good but here is simply bolded, you need to add the link

Sorry Vectris. I saw you reading the thread and hit the Add Reply button fast in case you beat me to it.

I have now corrected the link. Hope it works.

– Mohit

Hello again. Thank you again for the replies. It's nice coming to a forum where people are nice right away! Such a change from most forums these days.

If I buy a new drive, I would love to know how to transfer my files quickly. The only way I know how is just by coping them from one drive to another… manually. It takes hours and is pretty annoying.

Hello Catchinstars. After researching on your problem a bit, I found out that one cause of the problem is due to a corruption in the default Windows fonts. Please use the instructions from here to reinstall / replace the fonts and reboot your computer. See if the problem persists.

Let us know how it goes though. Good Luck.

– Mohit

Hi. Thank you for the reply. Before I go ahead and do this, I want to let you know that this problem is only happening to one of my external hard drives and that everything else (all other drives) is fine. Also, before this happened, I would get weird messages about my drive, such as "can't access folder" when I would try to click on it - until I unplugged it (as described I above). It seems to work okay now but I still don't trust it. So should I still go ahead with this?

Looking forward to your reply! This would make my day - if it were to work - because I wouldn't have to spend money on a new drive!

Hello Catchin. In real, there is no need to reinstall all the fonts; just the Tahoma font as Windows uses it to name files and folders. The corruption might be another reason why the problem occurs intermittently and therefore repairing it will definitely make things clearer if not better. Please try reinstalling the fonts and see if it resolves the problem or not. By the way, I have two questions that will help me refine my search: 1) Have you tried plugging any other USB devices such as a flash drive and check if they experience the same problem or not? 2) Were you infected recently? Please post back the required information as soon as possible. – Mohit

Ok, I reinstalled the font. It's hard to tell if it will make a difference or not since the hard drive was/is working fine now…. 1) Yeah, I think so. I've unplugged my other drives and they seem to work just fine, still. 2) Not as far as I know. I use NOD32 Antivirus and I'm protected. Nothing has showed up in the scans, either… I think I'll go buy a new hard drive just in case and save all of my files. Is there another way of transferring files (other than dragging them from one drive to the other)?

When you buy a new hard drive, it often comes with a CD that has a utility you can use to clone data from the old drive to the new drive. The procedure is fairly straight forward and when completed your new drive should be identical to the old.

• Put the CD that came with the new hard drive in the CD/DVD drive
• Power off the computer
• Install the new drive as a Slave by setting the jumpers on the drive to Slave. Connect it to the 2nd connector on the IDE cable (the one in between the connector on the system board and the one currently hooked to the existing hard drive).
• Connect a power lead to the new drive
• Power up the computer

You should be booting from the CD now.

Follow directions to setup a new boot drive or similar wording.

If the new drive does not come with a CD, you can download a ISOmage of the drive manufacturers utility from their web site then use it to create a bootable CD. Post back if you need help doing this once you have the new drive.

Once the copying has completed, remove the old drive, change the jumper on the new drive from Slate to Master, put it in place of the old drive and boot. System should come up just as it did before. Once you're satisfied with the new drive, install the old drive as a Slave, format it and use it for data or backup.

Hi catchinstars,

Ztruker has offered good instructions for the situation of installing a second hard drive as a permanent component inside of your computer. In such instances, the HD Manufacturer will have included a CD with program to "migrate" the contents of the primary hard drive.
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I think your plan actually is to purchase an "External" Hard Drive which would be plug-n-play via USB connection and external power supply.

In that instance of External HD, your best method for transfering files will be copy/paste.
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You have received some good research and recommendations from Mohit regarding an actual "fix" for the original problem that brought this to your attention. (related to reinstalling Tahoma Font)

***I would still recommend that you make every effort to secure your important documents, media, and files to a reliable new Hard Drive, before becoming involved in repair related to the intermittently malfunctioning drive.***

If you eventually succeed with the repair, you will have two External HD's available.
If your presently intermittently dysfunctional External fails during the fix, you might have better spent it's dying gasps on retrieving files.

Best Regards