Folder will not open on external hard drive

Hello all,

I have been struggling with this to no avail for some time now, so maybe someone has some insight on this issue or has experienced it themselves.

I have a folder on a Maxtor 300 GB external hard drive that contains some important documents that I can no longer access. When I click on this folder, it very briefly opens (for maybe 1 second or a 1/2 second) and then closes instantly and appears to start "explorer.exe" again (it reloads the taskbar and indicates my firewall/security status again as if I was just booting up). All of the other folders seem to be working fine, but as luck would have it this is the most important one. Unfortunately, since it closes so quickly I can't even determine what the exact contents of the folder are and cannot manipulate any of the files. I am using Windows XP home, and have never experienced this before. If anyone has any ideas, they would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know if I can provide any other information that might help to diagnose and solve the problem. Perhaps the folder is corrupted somehow, and if this is the case, is it possible to recover any of the files from it? I also appear to be free of virus, spyware and adware.

Thanks in advance!

 

Hello radiantly01 and welcome to the Board,

Right click on the folder in question and > properties. What does it say?

If your AV scanner added the option to scan a particular file/folder and you see the option to scan in the right click menu, do so. See if it can. On first blush, this sounds like the folder is corrupted/damaged.

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks for your help folks!

Charles: As far as the properties go, I am guessing you are looking for the attributes? If that is the case, "Read only" and "keep hidden" are unchecked, and everything else seems normal... the other folders on this drive seem to have the same attributes/properties.

There is the option to scan with AVG AV and AVG Anti-Spyware, and both do so with no problems.

Tony: If I copy the folder to the internal hard drive and it is corrupted, could it cause any other problems? I just wanted to check before I took this step. If the folder is corrupted, is there a good way to preserve the data somehow? Thanks again for helping.

 

Good job fellas... you correctly diagnosed the problem. The folder was corrupted, and the files within were fine. For some reason I hadn't thought to just search the entire drive for the folders I needed with the search function from the "run" menu. I found everything I needed, cut them from the corrupted folder and pasted them into a fresh folder, and everything worked fine. It was the first time I can ever remember a folder becoming corrupted on me like that. Thanks for your help and for getting me thinking correctly!