OK I was having some issues with my laptop the other day with certain programs (Explorer and Music apps) not responding after a few minutes of usage. Using task manager to close just gave me the END NOW message and did nothing. After about 30 minutes, items in the tray started to fall off one by one and the computer finally turned off.

I deleted the Music app thinking it was the culprit and made sure all security updates for XP were installed. A friend of mine tole me to right click the "C" drive and have it check and fix errors.

Now I get the following message on start up: "Checking file system on C: The type of the file system is NTFS. Cannot open volume for direct access. Windows has finished checking the disk."

After this it goes straight to the blue passowrd screen and everyhting seems to work OK. The only other noticeable issue is that it takes longer for the items in my tray to load as compared to be fore this problem.

The only recent mod to this PC is I added 256K of memory from Crucial.com to have a total of 512K of memory, and that was over a month ago.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Yes, this is exactly the same problem I am receiving right now. My computer also seems to be loading slower too. There is an article about this on the Microsoft site:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;823439

But as you can see, it has been nearly a year since it was last reviewed and still no action has been taken. Perhaps if you could email them, as I did, and let the know about it. Afterall, the more requests they get for this problem, the more likely they will be of reviewing it again.

EuriMouse

Eorimouse,

I found a cause for this problem. I am running Zone Alarm firewall software & I found a link to one of their forums that specifically states a problem with this NTFS message on strt-up and the newest updates to their software: http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/board...heckdisk*#M6037

After removing the software and restarting my PC I no longer recieved the message on start-up and things seem better.

Hope this helps.

I also have ZA. I will delete it also and hope it works... but I would try reinstalling ZA! Thanks for the help; I'll keep you posted!

EuriMouse

Yes, this has worked for me also. ZA is the problem here. I hope they fix it quick in their next update!

EuriMouse