Windows explorer problem (1 Viewer)

[Mike LS]

Wonder if anybody can help diagnose a problem.

I'm having a problem with windows explorer that's happening quite frequently.
I use explorer to access most all my files, so I'm in and out of it all day. A good bit of the time, after I reboot (for whatever reason) and I open explorer, I can't access any of my drives. I have no problem accessing the desktop, My Documents, Network Places, or the Recycle Bin, but I cannot open My Computer (I also can't open it by using the My Computer icon. The window will open, but it shows 0 objects). When I click on My Computer in explorer, the icon goes to the hourglass and then explorer stops responding.

Sometimes I can fix the problem by simply closing (ending) explorer.exe and it will automatically restart itself (or I can use the keyboard shortcut for it) and all is well, but most of the time I can do nothing but restart the system.
If a reboot is needed, the computer won't reboot itself. When I try to restart or shutdown (from the start menu or from ctrl + alt + delete), Nortons stops responding and has to be manually ended, then I get the "Windows is shutting down" dialog and the system hangs there. I have to do a hard boot to restart.

Sometimes I'll go through this 2 or 3 times before I'll be able to successfully access explorer. And when I am successful, I can run the system with no problem until the next needed reboot.

I'm running Win2000 on a Dell Dimension 4300.

Any ideas?

 

[Danny R]

The computer is hanging because its stuck waiting for one of your drives to respond. .

You might try pulling all the drives but hard drive, and see if the problem goes away. Then add back the drives individually to see where the problem lies. Of course if this problem doesn't occur every time, it makes it much harder to narrow down the cause.

My guess is a driver of some sort is out of whack. If you have a drive that has a non-windows driver, I'd reinstall it. If its a common part, like a CD-rom, then a reinstall of the OS may fix the problem, or the part itself might be damaged.