Applications dont work from USB harddisk

[Aristide de la Tanne]

On an external USB disk with 500 GB and FAT32, I have some
applications that can run without installation, e.g. Media Player
Classic. When I attach the disk to my laptop (with XP on NTFS), MPC
runs fine. When I attach it to my desktop PC (XP on NTFS as well), MPC
does not run, access to the USB disk "hangs", its LED turns red. On
the3 other hand, a copy of MPC on the internal HDD works perfectly.
What might be the problem with USB?
Regards, Aristide

 

[AlmostBob]

Security settings, somewhere, may have disabled running programs from
removable drives

--
Adaware http://www.lavasoft.de
spybot http://www.safer-networking.org
AVG free antivirus http://www.grisoft.com
Etrust/Vet/CA.online Antivirus scan
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
Panda online AntiVirus scan http://www.pandasoftware.com/ActiveScan/
Catalog of removal tools (1)
http://www.pandasoftware.com/download/utilities/
Catalog of removal tools (2)
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/newsinfo/collateral.aspx?CID=40387
Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts file
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
links provided as a courtesy, read all instructions on the pages before use

Grateful thanks to the authors and webmasters
_

 

[BillW50]

In AlmostBob typed on Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:13:54 -0300:

Security settings, somewhere, may have disabled running programs from
removable drives
_

That might work, but what works IMHO better is using the "Mount in the
following empty NTFS folder" option.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307889

 

[Aristide de la Tanne]

InAlmostBob typed on Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:13:54 -0300:



That might work, but what works IMHO better is using the "Mount in the
following empty NTFS folder" option.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307889

Bob and Bill, thanks for your valuable hints.

Since from the critical PC, even defrag was stuck after a minute, I
had to consider different causes. I deplore that I had not done before
and posted to early, sorry. It turned out that the connection cable
from the intermediate USB switch to the partucular PC in question is
much longer than the one to the laptop. Obviously it is too long or
too weak. Replacement solved all shortcomings.

Interesting to learn that copying hundreds of GB of video files was
not obstructed, and playing the videos in a player installed on the
desktop PC was not either. Only running the player on the external
drive itself was blocked.

Regards, Aristide