It sounds like the windows registry has been corrupted. It's possible a windows update may repair the damage.

If that doesn't help, let me know, and I will come up with some more idea's.

xetwnk.... check to see if in the root of each drive there is a file called autorun.inf. If there is please drag one into a notepad, zip it and attach to your next post [use the Go Advanced button]. Then delete each autorun.inf file that you find in the root of any drive. Tell us if they stay deleted ie are not recreated, say, at a fresh startup.

Do The following :

Open CMD (Start/Run/Cmd)
Type in :
1) X: (where X is the drive letter of the drive)
2) Type in 'del autorun.* /f /s /q /a'
3) Now Restart The Pc Immediately

Now try opening the drives, should work. Report back.

Thank you both for your responses thus far.

Alas, there were no autorun.* files in the root of C: or any other drive. I went through the motions of deleting them just in case, then rebooted, but it has made no difference -- (mis)behavior is just the same as I originally described.

<Puzzlement>

Next?

Any particular Windows Update? Do you refer to clicking on the balloon that pops up to inform us that "there are updates for your computer," or is there a specific MS webpage I should be looking at/for? I'll try the balloon thing while I wait to hear from you.

Do you have your windows install cd?

If so, Start, Run, type sfc\ scannow press enter.
You will need a full windows cd in the drive, not a recovery cd for this.

Yes, we have it. I even more-or-less think I know where it might be. ;-)

It's an HP-laptop-specific version, if that matters.

Further bulletins as events warrant, or if you write again right away.

Okay. I inserted the Windows XP install CD and canceled / closed the autostart window that came up. I popped up a cmd window and typed the command you gave --


and it was not recognized. I thought the syntax looked a little off, but I stuck with it as you had given it, at first. I searched C: for sfc.* and found it in C:\WINDOWS\system32, but specifying the full path still gave a not-recognized error. I CD'd to C:\WINDOWS\system32 and tried again; still not recognized. At that point I did a


-- with no trailing backslash -- and was rewarded with a list of options that included /SCANNOW -- with a forward slash.

So I did a


and that finally popped up a dialog box with a very slowly moving progress bar and a text about checking whether Windows protected files were in their original versions.

That ran for ten or fifteen minutes and then the window disappeared, leaving no message or other evidence of any results. Should I have seen anything else?

Just in case I did something that caused it to close prematurely, I am running it again as I write this.

Oh -- at no point did the program ask for, or appear to access, the CD.

And -- a question: won't Windows Updates done since the install from this CD, cause the files to show up as not their "original versions?"

Oops, it should be sfc/ scannow. Note that there is a space between / and scannow.

The scan should be able to tell the difference between an updated file and an altered or corrupted file.