the first problem i had was that when i would select multiple files, mostly media files, and try to move them to a different folder, explorer would freeze, then tell me drwatson has crashed and then restart explorer. I quickly learned that when this happened, instead of waiting for it to finish crashing, i could go into windows manager and shut down the drwtsn32 process, which would immediately restart explorer. This still prevents me from moving files, and happens every time, with disturbing regularity.
my first solution was eliminate media player, so i hid the "details" part of the window, so that WMP wouldn't be initailized, but this didn't help. So then I tried to reinstall windows, which is where I have my main problem, which I'll get to in a sec. Then i tried to disable drwtsn, using the microsoft "how to disable dr watson" page. Which didn't work because now i get "the instruction at "0x0398415b" referred memory at "0x000000000". The memory cannot be written." which restarts explorer, as usual. Oh, and to top it off, i didn't save the aedebug folder like it suggested i do... so i can't enable drwatson again. This is a seperate problem as my installing windows problem, but one might be solved with the other.
Ok, windows installation: I'm using the popular, 8 in 1 XP Pro disc that many people have, with an alternate serial number which i got from anothe program, and I'm wondering if it's worth really buying Xp, or even trying to switch back to 2000, because from what i hear 2000 has less issues. anyway, when I get to the "decide which partition to install windows on" part of the installation process, it gives me one option, which appears to be my 2nd hard drive, and not the one with the original installation on it. When i try to install to that partition, it tells me that the startup cannot see it, possibly because it was installed later (after the computer was built, duh) and the proper software wasn't used. I have two serial ata drives inside my tower, and one usb ata drive outside, if that helps.
These two problems are giving me some serious headaches and i can't solve one without the other, because I can't just move files from one hard drive to the other to format because of my drwatson issue, so i can't mess with my hard drive to get the computer to see it. I'm willing to get another hard drive if i have to, but I was hoping that that wouldn't be necessary. I'm willing to provide any more information that is needed, sorry this is such a long post, but i've got lots of problems. thanks
~ John