I/O device error message (external hard drive)--what do I do?

[Guest]

Three days ago suddenly my computer developed a problem recognizing my
external hard drive and when I tried accessing it thru Windows Explorer I got
the I/O device error message. Any idea what I can do about this? I have
Windows XP, a fast processor and huge hard drive, and I have plenty of disc
space. I did get the advice through another web forum to check for spyware
and trojan horses, which I diud and removed some, and also to uninstall some
resource hogging programs such as Norton Disk Doctor which I did and now my
boot up is faster, but the external hard drive is still not recognized
properly. In device manager it says it's operating normally. I checked for an
updated driver but there isn't any.

Also, what does DirectDBNotifyWndProc mean? I've been seeing that since the
above problem when I shut down my computer.

Any ideas? Thanks!!

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

What type of connection is it?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Jim]

Google turned up a few hits. Spyware?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=DirectDBNotifyWndProc+&btnG=Google+Search

 

[Guest]

It's a USB connection.

Hi,

What type of connection is it?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Guest]

Thanks. I will try bringing the external hard drive into work and see if it's
the hard drive or my computer. I suspect my computer because it's having
other problems, like that when I open add/remove programs it takes about 3-5
minutes for the list to populate. Why would that be? By the way, if I end up
having to reinstall Windows to get my computer working right and a friend of
mine had set up my Wireless connection to my cable modem, will it work
correctly right after the reinstall or would I have to have techie-level
skills to get that up and running? My friend is out of the country for
another week or two and I don't want to go without internet access.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Bob,

Start with the steps here:

General USB Troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310575

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org