Posted: 5/20/2005 1:55:35 PM EDT
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Yesterday, I tried to use the "My computer" explorer window. It takes forever for it to figure out what's in there. Down at the bottom, it says "searching for items" and in the screen where my folders shoud be, there's a flashlight scanning back and forth. Anybody seen this before. The only action I've taken is "restoring" the computer to a date a few weeks ago. It didn't help. Any ideas? |
It's trying to sync up with all of your hard drives and anything you have mapped on the network. It's having a hard time syncing with one of those items. |
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Ok, I did the chkdsk and defrag thing; it's not trying to spin up a CD, either. I meant to stay on the post, but chkdsk took like three hours to run, and I never saw the results. This is evidently not an uncommon problem... I googled it and have spent several nights chasing down possible solutions. Is a re-install in my future? |
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Z5, I'm not sure how much detail you need, but... Its a HP794n, 3.06 GHz. with 1024MB of DDR SDRAM memory, and a 250 gig HD. My computer, when it actually gets its act together, shows the 3.5 inch floppy, the DVD -rom, the DVD writer, a couple of empty memory chip (camcorder, dig. camera) icons, a C:\ and a D:\ HD (I think they are just partitioned, not 2 HDs) and 2 shortcuts, one to my shared docs and one to the owner (me)'s documents. I also have avast!antivirus active (turning it off doesn't help) INternet Explorer also opens very slowly, but Mozilla runs just about normal. Additionally, when I actually got Windows Explorer to open, in its "My computer" guise, I created a shortcut to the C:\ partition. It opens quickly. Finally, it doesn't matter if I finally get a reading and then use the "back" button after I've gone where I want to go; it still takes about 2-4 mins. to open the screen when I open the "my computer" shortcut. I've just realized that it IS unique to the use of the "My Computer" icon (and not just the desktop icon, ANY shortcut to "my computer" ... it doesn't want to show me EVERYTHING I have available, but doesn't mind showing me little parts of it. So how do I check the peripherals (?-izzat the right word?) and find out if's sonmething wrong with say, Memory card reader "H:"? ETA: I'm gonna try to figure out how to run a "scandisk". I might be gone for a while. |
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check disk = scandisk (scandisk is a Windows 9X POS that caused more problems than it solved) Sense C: opens quickly i'm betting its one of the removable media drives causeing the problem Defag is a complete waste of time it may improve access time by 0.0002 seconds. The only adavantage to defag is on servers with thousands of users. I would disable the removable media in the device manager one at time and see which resolves the problem. to run chkdsk open the command prompt then type ChkDSK hit the enter key. |
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another thought why do you have 3.5 inch floppy. your machine is new allot new computers don't come with them unless you request it??? This is unlikely but if the cable came loose to the floopy drive it does cause this problem. Have you opened your computer box or moved it recently???? |
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Z5, 1st, thanks for your interest and suggestions! If chkdsk does = scandisk, I ran one the other day and am about to do so again. I went into the computer management part of control panel and scheduled it for my next restart. Before, I used the DOS prompt. I'm gonna do it again, just to make sure. Will be gone for a while; last time it took a few hours.. so don't think I'm bein' rude. |
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I don't think it it has to do anything with your hard drives. Reason i think this is because the shortcut to the c drive works fast. and i'm betting the d drive is fine also... Another motheod you can use to test your other drives without having to use My computer or Explorer go to the Start menu then to RUN. the type each drive like so a: (special note you need to have a floopy in the dirve or it will return an error) hit the enter key c: hit the enter key d: hit the enter key e: hit the enter key f: hit the enter key g: hit the enter key h: hit the enter key it should open a new window really fast if it takes a long time chances are that it is the drive causing the problem. If a bad drive letter is entered don't freak out it should return and error saying [Some drive ] referrs to a location that is unavialble I'm asumming your on Win XP home edition report back any error messages |
chkdsk /R is an improved version of scandisk that does a thorough scan of the selected volumes. It checks all sectors and repairs them when possible. If the sector is un-reparable chkdsk will do it's best to recover the data, move it to another sector and isolate the bad sector. |
That all depends on what files are fragmented and how badly fragmented the volume is. Since NT and ME the microsoft operating systems have been built on a Unix Kernal. Bob, if you have Anti-Virus software and Spyware software installed. Try running that too. If you have picked up a Virus, Trojan or some of the more malevolent Spyware program it could account for your problem. If you don't get some. Other places you can look for some indication of what they problem may be is your System and Application Event Viewer. Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. |
That is true but chkntfs has been run at startup it would have kick started chkdsk /r if a problem was found which would take a couple of hours. You can only run this tool during boot because the filesystem becomes locked once the XP has completed startup. If he is running NTFS it is very unlikely that he has corrupted file system. NTFS is a fully logging file system. I have never run into corrupted NTFS file system where hard drive crash was not the cause. FAT32 / FAT16 are totally different stories, have runn into more than one corrupted MBR and MFT with those types of file systems. NTFS is less likely to become as fragmented and have other problems plus it's designed to catch bad sectors during normal operation unlike FAT |
OH NO, on a 250gig hd that would be trick, plus the speed of hds and with data density so high, defraging for the average user is not noticeable. Plus sense must user access data symmetrically having the file split into hundred or thousand chunks has no visible speed increase. Are we talking SCSI and asymmetrically access. That is where Defraging has it's benefits
ME is windows version 4. (something i don't remember the number off the top of my head) its based on the DOS (DISK OPERATING SYSTEM) with real mode drivers and among other problems. DOS is about the same age of Unix we know of today. these two operating system are not the same.... Windows 95 introduced number of Ideas borrowed from NT 3.51, protected mode, true 32 processing, preemptive multi tasking, among other things. NT has some ideas from Unix but its true roots go to VMS |
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Ok Back again. I tried running each drive from the start menu run command, and with the exception of drives B and G, which don't exist, and brought about the "drive is unavailable" quoted above; and the A (floppy) and E drives (DVD RW), which merely asked me to insert a disk, they all leapt out on my screen with great vim and vigor. C, D, and H, that is. Right now we ain't too sure about I, a multipurpose memory card reader; I did have a Memory Stick handy, and once I got the little bastid in there right, I: popped right on out. (I had to come back and add the ":" to "I" in the sentence above... It just didn't sound right w/o it) I'm trying to retreive a few hundred pics off there before it craters, if that's what's happening. I appreciate the help, guys. |
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Well. this is intriguing... My current attitude/approach to the problem, is well, it doesn't look like a magic solution is coming my way. No big deal. I switched my default browser to Firefox, and started searching Nonags for a freeware file management program to substitute for explorer. (I understand that explorer.exe does more than just show me files... I know that replacing it won't solve the problem; for example, ANY time I use an explorer window that shows ALL drives, it bogs down, such as when using the "Move" command - it opens a small explorer window) So I downloaded freeCommander...it won't execute or open. Then I try "EXPLORERXP", unpack it, and mash the desktop icon. Nothing. I mash it again. Box comes up, "this program is busy". WTF?? I'm either gonna move all my treasured files off this machine onto DVD or maybe a new external hard drive, and then this bitch is fixin to work right or become a new boat anchor. |
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fwiw, I had the same thing happen 2 times (2 different computers) on my "older" computer, upon istallation of SP2 over XPpro SP1, the control panel would NOT come up. and on a new istallation of java files on a machine with a clean install of XPpro SP2. I used the recovery console to get back I havent reinstalled SP2 on the older machine, nor the java crap on the other. |
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Actually what happens when I turn on ExplorerXP is as described above: I mash the desktop icon, nothing happens. I mash it a second time, and the program opens displaying a blank gray screen. After a few seconds, a small box appears and says "server" busy, and gives me a choice to "switch to..." or retry. Retry has no effect, but when I mash the "switch to", the start panel opens. HUH? Yet when I use Task Manager to determine what's happening in the background, nothing abnormal appears to be happening. I have run every task/check I can think of on all my drives, all the ones you guy have suggested, and none show any problems. |
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Are you SURE its not the antivirus software? Your problems sound a lot like what I had with Norton. I switched to Kasperski and the problems were corrected. CounterSpy is a great spyware and well worth the 19.00 IMHO. It detected a trojan that slipped right by Search and Destroy. You might check your task manager from time to time to see whats bogging your cpu. Good luck |
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This is actually one of the things that Knoppix is very useful for. If you can download and burn a copy, or get a friend to do it for you, you can take a look at your drives to see what is going on. BTW, one problem you might be having is that the FAT and FAT32 filesystems -- the ones that Microsoft developed back in the 1980's -- have an issue with large numbers of files in a single directory. Once the number hits a certain point, the OS goes batshit. This is still a problem even after you delete or move files, because the file allocation table is still going to be huge; the only good way to fix it is to organize your files into a lot of subdirectories UNDER A DIFFERENT DIRECTORY, then delete the big-ass directory. In other words, if you have a few thousand files in c:\downloads\pr0n Create a directory somewhere else, like c:\sorted create subdirectories like c:\sorted\lezporn c:\sorted\animalporn c:\sorted\creampies Move the files from c:\downloads\pr0n into the appropriate new locations Then delete c:\downloads\pr0n Tee-hee.  Of course, if your problem is in c:\ then you are basically hosed, and may have to move the files off to a completely different drive, and reformat the c: drive. This was my experience with Win95 and Win98, at least. I haven't had the problems recently, because I don't use Microsoft any more, er, I mean I don't create huge directories chock full of unsorted junk any more. |
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Just wanted to say thanks to all those who helped or at least tried to help. Ultimately what saved me was the shortest suggestion which was "Uh, Bob, time to call tech support". What finally isolated the problem was the trick of unplugging all the peripherals: USB connection, speakers, etc. I then worked thru it and determined that a USB hub was at fault. The only thing plugged into it was the scanner. Plugging the scanner directly into the computer solved the problem. I also discovered that my scanner, a Microtek Scan maker 4800, carries a program called SDII.exe, that can cause system resources to bog down. Again, thanks to all for your constructive suggestions. Who'd ever dream that you could get so much computer help on a gun forum? |
That's what I hate about all these programs coming out.. they think they are so f'n important that they have programs hogging all the resources (and/or TSR type stuff) when you don't even need it. |
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