Myron Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 It's a coincidence that a thread with a similar title already exists, but the symptoms described there don't entirely match with mine, so I decided to make this thread.Not so long ago, my external harddrive, a Maxtor One Touch (can't remember the exact number etc.), started giving me trouble. It's a very peculiar kind. Most folders contained in the harddrive I can still access. But it seems as though the larger folders, containing several gigabytes of data, seem to give the harddrive more trouble. I used to be able to still access the folder after waiting for a minute or so, but now it's as good as completely useless, and I can only acces the smaller folders now. I'm absolutely stumped as to what might cause this :(Since then, however, my local harddrive (D:) has been acting a little weirdly too. The one remarkable thing, is that I can't seem to play any media player files anymore. Double clicking them simply does absolutely nothing :(Some of these files are on my desktop, and thus on my C: drive. So it seems to be limited not only to my external drive, although the "folder problem" remains isolated within the external drive.I've done several virus scans and spyware scans, and come up with negative results. I've tried formating my external drive, btw, and it told me it couldn't proceed, because something was wrong with a certain folder. When I tried to delete the folder manually, I got an error message. Something about "A/E". I'm afraid I don't remember the exact error message. I've been unable to delete the folder anyway...That's the best description I can give you. If you could help me out with this I'd be really greatful, as I'm starting to get nervous about the possibility of losing lots of data, or having to format :(Thanks :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 Welcom to Neo Planet :) Rather than a disk failure, this appears to me to be a corruption of one or more system files.I am not an expert on remedying this but I'm sure someone who is will be along shortly to help you out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 I notice in your profile that you are Windows XP SP1. Is that correct? If so, do you have a reason for not being on SP2? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanHo Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 I cannot help you with your problem - except to say that my Maxtor external drive has recently been exchanged under warranty for misbehaving. In my case it was working OK but was not being detected by Windows XP without manual intervention.I assume and hope that you have up-to-date back-ups of all your data on some secure media just in case things go totally pear shaped.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myron Posted July 12, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 It's true. I'm running under Service Pack 1. I've tried downloading and isntalling SP2, but it caused many programs to become unusable. A computer mechanic agreed with me that SP2 just doesn't seem to work well with my computer, and we don't have an explanation for it. Nevertheless, this hasn't hampered my harddrive in the past. It's just now that something went wrong...It could be that you're right, Pops. In fact, like I said earlier, when I tried to defrag that harddrive, it gave me a message saying that it couldn't proceed, because there was something wrong with a certain folder.I believe that, if I can manage to somehow delete that folder, I'll be one step further already. But like I said... I can't. If anybody knows of a way to delete the folder other than through shift+delete, that might help already. Perhaps some third party software?Oh, and I managed to get a screenshot of the error I had with the E/A error.http://img315.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eaerror5xd.jpgI'm sorry it's in German (I'm not German myself though, but don't ask :)), but I'll translate the essence of it:The folder "EGO" cannot be deleted: Due to an E/A-error the action could not be completedOh and btw, about the media player thing. The only time I'm having trouble with WMP on a harddrive other than L: (the external one), is when I'm trying to use it for a file on L: at the same time. So I have reason to believe, now, that the problem is after all isolated to L: alone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 All of these problems lead to the same conclusion - your copy of Windows is corrupt and will not improve by patching things up - probably get worse.Your computer mechanic should have told you there was something fundamentally wrong with the machine when he couldn't install SP2. Inability to install this important service pack should indicate to anyone with any computer expertise at all that things are not right.I'm afraid the only solution for this is to save all important data and do a fresh install of your operating system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwp Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 just a thought can you connect your hard drive to a different computer andif so can you access your data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
expertec Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 Sorry if this has been mentioned already, as I haven't read all the previous posts, but have you tried running scandisk on it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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