Windows Explorer locks when accessing my D & E drive

[Mike Portwood]

Hi,
I'm running WinXP with 2 120gig HDD, configured as "Basic"
drives, Drive 0 is partitioned into a boot C-drive and a
data D-drive; Drive 1 is a single partition data drive.

This is a new install, and I used windows explorer (I favor
WE's UI) to access these drives. C-drive opens fine.
D and E-drive opened fine until the following occured:

This PC was given to a new user. I wanted to xfer data
folders from her 2 old IDE drives onto the new ones in the
XP machine

Right off the bat, the XP machine had problems even seeing
these drives when I connected them one at a time to the
secondary IDE channel of the machine (Dell 340) These
drives were originaly installed in her machine on a Promise
Ultra 133 x2 IDE controller and configured as "simple
dynamic" drives (why I dont know, since they were both
single partition drives)

I got one drive to eventually "import" into WinXP using the
control panel disk manager, and copied the files to the new
machine using My Computer. The second drive (same model)
didnt offer an import option, it just showed up and I
copied it too with My computer (it took a couple reboots
and luck before it showed up in My Computer even). WE could
not "see" either of them during the transfers. Neither of
the "old" drives were kept in the new machine.

After the file copy, WE would not open either D or E drive,
it just hung up with the hourglass. You have to click the X
box and then it presents the "end now, program not
responding" window. C-drive still opens fine with WE. Only
My Computer will open D or E.

Anyone know whats up with WinXP's WE in this case?
If there is a fix or even a logical reason why this is
happening, other than going back to W2k? Any help would be
greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Mike

[Walter Clayton]

A bit more information is needed. I suspect I know what the problem is but
I'm having to make a ton of unconfirmed assumptions. And frankly I'm
surprised you got as far as you did if I'm correct.

Was the Promise controller running in a RAID configuration? If the "old" OS
was an NT kernel as you sort of implied, was it running the drives in RAID
mode?

You may have to reattach the drives to the "old" machine to determine these,
but from a number of things implied I suspect the problem does revolve
around the "old" drives were in a RAID configuration. If so, you're going to
have to start over and take a completely different approach to transferring
the data.

--
Walter Clayton - MS MVP(WinXP)
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.dts-l.org
http://support.microsoft.com/servicedesks/fileversion/default.asp


"Mike Portwood" > wrote in message
...
> Hi,
> I'm running WinXP with 2 120gig HDD, configured as "Basic"
> drives, Drive 0 is partitioned into a boot C-drive and a
> data D-drive; Drive 1 is a single partition data drive.
>
> This is a new install, and I used windows explorer (I favor
> WE's UI) to access these drives. C-drive opens fine.
> D and E-drive opened fine until the following occured:
>
> This PC was given to a new user. I wanted to xfer data
> folders from her 2 old IDE drives onto the new ones in the
> XP machine
>
> Right off the bat, the XP machine had problems even seeing
> these drives when I connected them one at a time to the
> secondary IDE channel of the machine (Dell 340) These
> drives were originaly installed in her machine on a Promise
> Ultra 133 x2 IDE controller and configured as "simple
> dynamic" drives (why I dont know, since they were both
> single partition drives)
>
> I got one drive to eventually "import" into WinXP using the
> control panel disk manager, and copied the files to the new
> machine using My Computer. The second drive (same model)
> didnt offer an import option, it just showed up and I
> copied it too with My computer (it took a couple reboots
> and luck before it showed up in My Computer even). WE could
> not "see" either of them during the transfers. Neither of
> the "old" drives were kept in the new machine.
>
> After the file copy, WE would not open either D or E drive,
> it just hung up with the hourglass. You have to click the X
> box and then it presents the "end now, program not
> responding" window. C-drive still opens fine with WE. Only
> My Computer will open D or E.
>
> Anyone know whats up with WinXP's WE in this case?
> If there is a fix or even a logical reason why this is
> happening, other than going back to W2k? Any help would be
> greatly appreciated.
> Thanks!
> Mike
>
>

[Mike Portwood]

Thanks for the reply...

I don't think the Promise controller was running as any
type of RAID. W2K's Disk Manager on the old machine just
showed the 2 drives as separate physical drives H: and I:
of the proper sizes. I went to the Promise wesite to get
the drivers for that controller and don't recall that the
Ultra-133 x2 was RAID capable...I think it is just a fast
2-channel IDE card. The 2 old drives were actually a 120gig
and an 80gig...so at least it couldn't have been any RAID
system wanting equal drives.
Also, the user of this new PC said today that WE was
actually WORKING on these new drives until yesterday (3
days after I gave her the machine) which surprised me since
WE didnt work the day I copied the files, so it seems that
its somewhat erratic as well.

Mike

[Walter Clayton]

Sounds like you don't have ready access to the machine. :-/

OK. There are other possibilities. First however, My Computer uses sits on
top of Windows Explorer. It's just a different view.

We'll ignore the "old" configuration and concentrate on what's on hand. What
kind of AV was installed? Is there an autorun.inf on the root of either of
the new volumes? What kind of view is being used (detail, thumbnail, etc.)?

--
Walter Clayton - MS MVP(WinXP)
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.dts-l.org
http://support.microsoft.com/servicedesks/fileversion/default.asp


"Mike Portwood" > wrote in message
...
> Thanks for the reply...
>
> I don't think the Promise controller was running as any
> type of RAID. W2K's Disk Manager on the old machine just
> showed the 2 drives as separate physical drives H: and I:
> of the proper sizes. I went to the Promise wesite to get
> the drivers for that controller and don't recall that the
> Ultra-133 x2 was RAID capable...I think it is just a fast
> 2-channel IDE card. The 2 old drives were actually a 120gig
> and an 80gig...so at least it couldn't have been any RAID
> system wanting equal drives.
> Also, the user of this new PC said today that WE was
> actually WORKING on these new drives until yesterday (3
> days after I gave her the machine) which surprised me since
> WE didnt work the day I copied the files, so it seems that
> its somewhat erratic as well.
>
> Mike
>