Topic: Crazy Computer 'Problem'

[stevetoney]

I'm probably like everyone else in that I'm a weekend computer jock...know enough to really mess things up! 

In an effort to make my system run more efficiently, a while back I moved maybe half of my programs out of the 'Program Files' directory on my C: drive to an external hard drive.  I did this on a hunch that maybe it would improve the speed of my machine (having two drives being accessed simultaneously for running software rather than just the C: drive).  I simply created another 'Program Files' directory on the external hard drive and ran the programs from that location.  (I have 4 or 5 external hard drives, but only one is serving as my second 'Program Files' directory.)

A few weeks ago, all of the executable files in the 'program files' directory of the external drive became disabled.

Hmmm...

So, I uninstalled all of this software and reinstalled all of the programs back to the same directory.  Fixed.

All of these programs worked fine for 1 1/2 weeks and then last night I fired up my machine and all of the exectuables are once again disabled!

None of the executable files are messed up on the C: drive though, only on the external drive.

Anybody know what's up?

[fleish]

How do you mean "disabled"? If you browse for the executable files on the external drive & double-click them what happens? Is it possible your external drives are changing letters between reboots & therefore the links you have in your start->programs menu are actually just pointing to the wrong place?

[EarlyMorningRain]

To me it sounds like you just moved some Programs from your C: drive to some other drive, but did nothing within the Registry to make that match what you actually did.

Every software application (once installed) makes it's own Registry entries (some apps can have upwards to 100+ entries) and each entry has a specific purpuse, including providing the path to things such as .dll files and .exe files.

To sum it up, you can't just move programs from your C:\ drive to another drive (using the copy/paste method that is) and expect that program to work. The proper way to move Programs (and their icons) to a different hard drive is to Un-install, reboot (for good measures) and re-install whatever it is you want to run on that other drive on that other drive.  Doing it this way will update your Registry as need be

Whatever you did (some of that lost me), I'd say your best bet is to undo everything you did already, un-install any program you are trying to move, and re-install it on that other drive.

[Church-Audio]

To me it sounds like you just moved some Programs from your C: drive to some other drive, but did nothing within the Registry to make that match what you actually did.

Every software application (once installed) makes it's own Registry entries (some apps can have upwards to 100+ entries) and each entry has a specific purpuse, including providing the path to things such as .dll files and .exe files.

To sum it up, you can't just move programs from your C:\ drive to another drive (using the copy/paste method that is) and expect that program to work. The proper way to move Programs (and their icons) to a different hard drive is to Un-install, reboot (for good measures) and re-install whatever it is you want to run on that other drive on that other drive.  Doing it this way will update your Registry as need be

Whatever you did (some of that lost me), I'd say your best bet is to undo everything you did already, un-install any program you are trying to move, and re-install it on that other drive.

Yep I would agree with that 100% I think you need to really think hard about reinstalling windows and it that is not possible the program I turn too when things get screwed up is System mechanic pro. It works great and it fixes registry problems like bad links. There are many other useful features in this program but really the easy thing to do would be to reinstall everything including windows. Why did you want to move your programs was your drive getting full? If so drives are DIRT cheap now and it might be a good time to upgrade. There is nothing like a fresh install of windows To make a machine run fast as snot.

[stevetoney]

How do you mean "disabled"? If you browse for the executable files on the external drive & double-click them what happens? Is it possible your external drives are changing letters between reboots & therefore the links you have in your start->programs menu are actually just pointing to the wrong place?

Thanks fleish.  Good question, but no that's not what's going on.  The actual executable file that sits in the root directory (the directory in which the program sits, as a subdirectory in program files on the external drive) are literally disabled.  The icons are whacked...and if I click on the generic icon that replaces the old 'real' icon, I just get an error message because, of course, the executable file is not longer functional.

[stevetoney]

To me it sounds like you just moved some Programs from your C: drive to some other drive, but did nothing within the Registry to make that match what you actually did.

Every software application (once installed) makes it's own Registry entries (some apps can have upwards to 100+ entries) and each entry has a specific purpuse, including providing the path to things such as .dll files and .exe files.

To sum it up, you can't just move programs from your C:\ drive to another drive (using the copy/paste method that is) and expect that program to work. The proper way to move Programs (and their icons) to a different hard drive is to Un-install, reboot (for good measures) and re-install whatever it is you want to run on that other drive on that other drive.  Doing it this way will update your Registry as need be

Whatever you did (some of that lost me), I'd say your best bet is to undo everything you did already, un-install any program you are trying to move, and re-install it on that other drive.

OK, Thanks for this response.  This I think might be getting closer to making sense.  OK, first of all, I in fact have been unistalling and reinstalling the programs. 

Recall from my earlier message that I had been working with all of these programs installed on the new drive and everything had been working for well over a week.  However, this same thing has happened to me twice now.

Is it possible that the registry for the external drive is somehow getting modified or whacked...say by antivirus software, add-on fixlets, microsoft service pack vulnerability fixes, etc or some other external automatic update process?

[EarlyMorningRain]

Recall from my earlier message that I had been working with all of these programs installed on the new drive and everything had been working for well over a week.  However, this same thing has happened to me twice now.

Can't really explain why it worked for a week+ then stopped, but when your using a Microsoft product as your operating system, don't expect things to work 100% accurately 100% of the time......

Is it possible that the registry for the external drive is somehow getting modified or whacked...say by antivirus software, add-on fixlets, Microsoft service pack vulnerability fixes, etc or some other external automatic update process?

sounds more like a virus to me. Either that or Defrag that external drive, or run a chkdsk /f on it (or maybe even a chkdsk /r)

[notsofast]

One other possiblity is you may need to Map the external drive under "my computer". When you boot or change settings the external drive letter could change and render the files un-useable because they were D:\ but are now F:\.  It could be a simple fix,

I agree with others, when in doubt and searching for speed, a fresh install makes a big difference. Can be a pain rebuilding and installing but well worth the effort.

Ping me if you need help on mapping the drive,

Tim

[stevetoney]

One other possiblity is you may need to Map the external drive under "my computer". When you boot or change settings the external drive letter could change and render the files un-useable because they were D:\ but are now F:\.  It could be a simple fix,

I agree with others, when in doubt and searching for speed, a fresh install makes a big difference. Can be a pain rebuilding and installing but well worth the effort.

Ping me if you need help on mapping the drive,

Tim

Tim/AKA Not So Blue:

This could very well be the issue.  It's VERY possible that the drive name has been reassigned because I'd sent two external drives out to have Phish loaded onto them and just got them back.  So obviously I've put those back onto my system.

So I'll look into instructions on how to map a drive...I'm sure they're out there on the web somewhere.  If I have problems I'll get back to you Tim.

BTW, thanks everyone for the help.  Actually, rebuilding my system to get it to run faster was what started all of this in the first place.  I uninstalled everything to the point of being able to re-format my main on-board drives and started fresh with a new system disc install (all of the original software that came with my PC)...then went through the relatively time consuming process of installing Windows Service Packs 2 and 3...which you have to do sequentially and when each takes...oh...an hour or maybe a little more....PLUS went through all of the teensy little upgrade fixlets that microsoft sends out.

Anyways, the point is that I appreciate all of the helpful tips, but I had already implemented all of those suggestions to improve my system performance and they all worked GREAT, but this damn problem has come up a couple of times now and it's just funky wierd.

Hopefully the suggestion about registry changes and mapping the drive differently will be my fix!

Once again, thanks everyone!!!

[EarlyMorningRain]

then went through the relatively time consuming process of installing Windows Service Packs 2 and 3...which you have to do sequentially and when each takes...oh...an hour or maybe a little more....

how much RAM do you have, and what's the processor speed? Installing Windows Service Packs do not take an hour (apiece) to install,  for me that is. Within the past couple of weeks, I've wiped about 4-6 different machines at work (all circa 3-5 yrs old) where I did a reformat of the drive, followed by a fresh install of Windows XP (then did all the Service Packs and other critical updates). Not one of these machines took anywhere close to an hour to install a single Windows Service Pack (YMMV of course).

Now that it's been mentioned, I bet the drive letter changed on your external drive, that makes perfect sense. Net Use is the command to map drives.

FYI - if you have Windows SP1 installed, you can skip straight to SP3

[phanophish]

I'd also mention you are highly unlikely to see a performance increase just from installing the applications on an external drive, in fact you probably will see a decrease in performance.  The internal HD will have much higher read/write speeds than the external (assuming USB2) and unless you are constantly opening and closing numerous applications there will be very little performance impact.  The only time the drive is really used for most applications is when it is first launched.  After that it is resident in RAM and no longer regularly reading from disk.

I would guess that what you are seeing happen is for whatever reason your external drive is getting disconnected from your PC and following that either the NTFS permissions are no longer consistent or the mounted drive letter is changing.  Does a reboot fix anything?  Can you browse to the files in explorer?

[mattmiller]

I agree that, if anything, running from an external drive is going to negatively affect performance.  You'd be much better off making a separate partition of your internal hard drive (mapped as its own "drive") which is dedicated to storing the programs.  Actually, if you were starting from scratch, the general protocol is to install the OS and any programs on one partition, and all of your data on a separate partition.