Winkey-E problem with starting Explorer

[Jeff Godfrey]

Hi All,

In the last few weeks, I've noticed that starting Win Explorer via WinKey-E
hammers my floppy drive for a few seconds before finally showing a normal
view. This wasn't a problem prior to a few weeks ago. Opening Explorer
using different methods produces these results:

State 1 - Accesses floppy for a few seconds before continuing, and is slow
(due to floppy access)
State 2 - Does not access floppy and is fast

- WinKey-E - state 1
- Double-click "My Computer" on desktop - state 1
- Right-click "My Computer" on desktop and select "Explore" - state 1
- Right-click the "Start" button and select "Explore" - state 2

I've noticed that all of the above actions that produce the floppy delay
(state 1) open Windows Explorer at the "My Computer" node, of which the
floppy is a child node. I assume the floppy access is due to the Explorer
trying to determine what to display for the "A:" drive node. In the case
that produces "state 2" above, Explorer obviously opens at a much deeper
folder structure of the "C" drive, which has nothing to do with the floppy,
so it opens cleanly.

So, I'm not wondering why the floppy access has only been a problem for a
few weeks, as I *always* open Explorer via WinKey-E. I have other XP
systems that work correctly via WinKey-E. That is, they open at the "My
Computer" node, but don't access the floppy drive - just like the troubled
system used to.

So, any ideas on what might have changed, or how I can fix it?

As a side note, how is the WinKey-E combo mapped to open Explorer? Is there
a shortcut somewhere that controls that mapping, or do I have any other
control over it?

Thanks for any input.

Jeff Godfrey

 

[David Candy]

You have no control over it. It will read the drive if it thinks there is a new disk in it (why it sometimes will read the drive).

Have you opened any docs or programs on the A drive in the past. If so clear history lists.

 

[Don Taylor]

You have no control over it. It will read the drive if it thinks there =
is a new disk in it (why it sometimes will read the drive).

Have you opened any docs or programs on the A drive in the past. If so =
clear history lists.

It might be nice if someone would write a little script that would accept
a file name or drive, go through the history lists and only delete that
from the list, since people seem to post problems regularly where the
advice is to remove the offending items from history.

This then could easily be used to purge A: or *.avi or... from the history,
which would seem generally useful, without torpedoing everything in history.

Googling for XP script edit history leads to Microsoft pages that show
how simple scripts can delete all of history, but when I peek into the
registry it doesn't have nice readable names, everything is encrypted into
long meaningless id's so an ordinary person can't figure out which lines
to delete. But presumably a bright script jockey knows how to translate
those back to real file names, match them, and delete the appropriate ones.