Vista's last straw :( Everything is READ ONLY!

[phantomdesign]

So, my home computer dual-boots vista & XP 64. I made the mistake of installing vista first so I could play DX 10 games, so most of my programs and settings are all in vista at the moment.

You all probably know about the massively bloated use of system resources (Vista on my computer is like strapping a cow to a supercharged supercar IMO) & numerous random small bugs and annoyances everywhere. Well, the first big issue I had was USB devices. Strangely, when I unplugged one, then plugged it back in, vista wanted to find the drivers again . . .except now it can't find drivers . . . meaning over time, my [1] Camera stopped working, [2] USB gaming keyboard, [3] bluetooth, [4] Phone USB, [5] Joystick, [6] gamepad, and [7] . . . (I'm forgetting something). In XP, I plug anything in and it works 98% of the time automatically (without downloading drivers)!

So you think that's bad?

Well, I procrastinated (grrrr) switching 100% to XP . . .then one day, one of my old hard drives goes 100% read only! WTF? So I fix it the usual way & all is good. This happens a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th time in about a 3 month period, then about hte 6th time, I uncheck read only, but this time it does nothing! So, this is annoying. Then it happens to my other old harddrive.

Then about 10 days later (today) I'm working on a project, save a file & close. Go to save & close another document and it refuses to save! Anyway, I end up discovering that now EVERY DAMN FOLDER ON MY ENTIRE F***ING COMPUTER is now read-only & can't be changed back. I can't even change it in XP! I'm afraid I'm going to have to backup everything on my laptop and format.

So yea, I don't know why I allowed myself to cripple my computer for so long!

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

Yikes. Didn't old hard drives have a little switch on them to lock out writing?
Wait I think I'm thinking of floppies.

Um, this happened on XP or Vista? Do your USB shits work in XP?

 

[phantomdesign]

My USB stuff works fine in XP.

The tabs are from the "good old" floppy days. I remeber taping over those tabs on some disks to make them usable.

Evidently XP was able to disable the read-only (for now), but the tag still appears read only (while vista was definitely failing). Right now I'm uninstalling just about everything from vista & then going to collect any custom files/documents, then FORMAT! I might try to transfer everything to my laptop (300GB) so I can format all my drives to make sure it's clean. It's a good thing my computer is very well organized; should have all my programs, documents, settings, and 95% of the important stuff setup by tomorrow night. It's nearly time for "spring cleaning" anyway, lol.

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

That's a good action to take.
I wouldn't write off the chance your HD is just failing. This is not a problem I have experience with.

 

[phantomdesign]

Well, that would mean 3 harddrives are failing . . . .all at the same time.

 

[Eejit]

That's odd, I haven't had any problems at all with Vista. I don't have dual boot though, maybe there are some conflicts?

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

"then one day, one of my old hard drives goes"

"Then about 10 days later"

Doesn't sound like that is the case.

Maybe your file system is just slowly corrupting.

You could also have a strange virus.

I would check to see if you've lost an actual data.