Hi everyone,
I noticed this problem a few weeks ago: when trying to move unneeded files off my laptop onto my external hard drive to free up some space, the computer made a "ping!" noise (the noise it makes when you are trying to drop something somewhere "illegal") and the files didn't move. This happened whether I cut or copied & pasted it, or clicked and dragged, or anything else I could think of (when I click and drag rather than copy/paste there is no noise though). I thought it was a temporary problem and didn't give it much attention until I realized that I can't move stuff around on my computer, either. On my desktop, if I pick up a document and try to drop it into a folder, nothing happens.

I'm at a total loss as I can't find anything about this problem on the internet, and my laptop is almost entirely out of space.

Please help!!!

Mollie M.

Are those files coming from any particular folder?

Nope, it's any folder - music, pictures, you name it. Even files just sitting by themselves on the desktop. All types of extensions. Can't move to either the external or to other locations on the laptop's hard drive.

Did you install anything recently?
Same thing in Safe Mode?

Your on vista so this will probably be a little bit different, but you can figure it out.
Right click the start button and click properties. On start menu tab click customize. Click the advanced tab and see if enable drag and drop is checked. Like I said, that's how it is on xp so it'll probably be a little different on vista.
Also try opening Internet explorer and click tools>internet options>security>custom level> and scroll down to drag and drop copy or paste and make sure thats enabled.

Do these help?

You may also be having the problem caused by the KB 938979 update. This update fixes problems with downloading Vista SP1.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/08/18/f...kb938979-patch/

SRX660

Hi -- sorry for the delayed response, for some reason I wasn't getting the topic replies in my email.

Broni, yes, the same thing happens in Safe Mode. No idea what could have caused because I believe this was going on a long time before I noticed (I had thought it was just a problem copying from my hard drive to my external hard drive, but realized later I couldn't move anything around on my computer either).

Irrevocable...drag & drop is indeed enabled. It's not just drag and drop that doesn't work, it's also copying and pasting or cutting and pasting...or anything else I can think to try.

SRX660, your response seemed promising, but I was so eager to try it that I didn't go ahead and read the part about making sure that KB938979 was already installed, or to backup the registry. I unzipped the fix and merged the files with the registry, and restarted...nothing bad seems to have happened, but nothing good either. Hopefully I haven't made things worse. Let me know what you think.

Thanks so much for all your help!

Hooooold on. It seems that I can now copy things to my external and move stuff from one folder to another, except for the stuff on my desktop. And even that I can move through explorer...but not by dragging/dropping or copying/pasting on the actual desktop.

Edit: I can actually drag/drop things from one place to another within a particular explorer window (i.e. if I have two different windows open, one looking at my C drive and one at my external, I can't drop from one to another). I can't do either by copy/pasting. How bizarre.

Weird. But I'm taking what I can get for now. Thanks SRX as I assume it was your fix that changed this. Still, if you or anyone has any additional input about the desktop problem please do share

This post has been edited by autumnwalker: Sep 25 2008, 09:16 PM