saving attachment causes "format C drive" message

[Guest]

I have Outlook 2003 on a laptop that I've had for about 18 months. I
installed Office 2003 late last year. All was well until about 2 weeks ago
when I began to experience difficulty saving email attachments.

When I get the email with the attachment and click it, click save, the "Save
As" window opens in "My Documents" and "The disk on drive C is not formatted.
Do you want to format it now? YES NO" dialogue pops up. When I click "No"
(I, of course have no intention of clicking "Yes" to see what happens), I get
an endless loop of the same dialogue. Closing the "My Documents" box causes
Outlook to "Not Responding" and a forced ending of the program.

I downloaded the SP1 and that didn't help the problem.

Any ideas on how to fix this one? Uninstall and reinstalll Office 2003?

Thanks!--
RayC

 

[Patty MacDuffie]

I'd do some thorough scanning of your drive with an up-to-date antivirus
program and Ad-Aware SE.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a brand new Norton Internet Security/Anti-virus 2005 version with
daily total disk scan. Update is automatic. I also run Spybot resident.

Any other thoughts?

 

[Patty MacDuffie]

I would still give Ad-Aware SE a shot. It's very good. I've seen mixed
results with Spybot, and Norton just shouldn't be in the spyware protection
business.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Okay, I removed Spybot, installed Ad-Aware SE and scanned/quarantined all
items it found. Rebooted and the problem remains. I still get a "reformat
the C drive" message.

Any other suggestions

 

[Patty MacDuffie]

You running Windows XP? SP2? I'd have to do standard troubleshooting at
this point. I'd boot into safe mode and see if it still happens. I'd try a
repair of Office. I'd try a repair of Windows. I'd try all sorts of
things.
--
Patty MacDuffie
MS MVP 1999-2004

Hi,

Okay, I removed Spybot, installed Ad-Aware SE and scanned/quarantined all
items it found. Rebooted and the problem remains. I still get a
"reformat
the C drive" message.

Any other suggestions

 

[Guest]

Hi Patty,

Yes, I'm running XP with SP2. I'll try safe mode and let you know. Thanks
for your assistance.

 

[Guest]

Hi again Patty,

I tried running in safe mode. The problem still occurs. Also, clicking on
"My Computer" and going to "My Documents" now results in the same message -
"C Drive is not formated. Format now?"

I'm really confused. I've scanned, I've change spyware and scanned again,
I've changed all of my settings to minimal loading of background programs. I
don't know what to do next.

Your advice, please.

Thanks,

 

[Patty MacDuffie]

Ray, are you familiar with HiJack This?
http://www.merijn.org/files/hijackthis.zip You can install it and run a
scan, but I wouldn't go "fixing" anything unless you're very familiar with
what you are looking at. You could post the results of your scan here.
You either have a bad bug on your computer, or you have something severely
short circuited with your operating system.