Weird Windows XP Situation

[skati]

Hey all, I'm wondering if any of you have heard of this weird Windows XP issue. When trying to open up the c drive in my computer (via double clicking or clicking, then hitting enter), I get an error message saying:

Run-time Error '76'

Path not found

Now here's the thing though. When I pull up folder view in my computer and open up the c drive through that, it pulls up fine. When I right click and select open from the context menu, it pulls up fine. And lastly, when I select explore from the right click context menu, it pulls up fine. It only gives that error when double click and highlighting it and hitting enter. Also, it's only the c drive that does it.

I've ran a check disk on it, that worked. I deleted temp, temporary internent, and cookie files, that didn't work. I've also scanned for spyware and virues and still nothing. Also, defrag didn't help anything either.

It's not really screwing anything up, but it's just an annoying issue I'd like to solve for the sake of it...that and cause I'm the only one in the house that'd think to pull up folder or the right click context menu.

This is happening on two computers. One is a laptop and the other is a desktop. The c drive was shared, but I disabled sharing on it to see if that'd work. No go there.

The desktop is Windows XP Media Center Version 2002, Service Pack 3.

The laptop is Windows XP Professional Version 2002, Service Pack 3.

This issue started the day before yesterday...or at least, I noticed it then.

Thanks for any and all help...or heck, thanks for just giving it a look as well.

[Mak213]

Hello,

If you can try a Restore Point to a time before the issue started. If that doesn work try a Repair install.

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

Cheers,
Mak

[smok333]

check this out.. might help u...
DISCUSSBITS • View topic - How To: Clean C: Drive

[skati]

Thanks to both of you for the replies. I've not tried anything yet though, as I've been busy. I'm going to wait to try your suggestions, til I get an external hard drive to back things up on (just in case...I need to get one anyway for school). After that, I'm going to go with the second suggestion first, as that'll be the quickest one (the how to clean c: link) to do.

I do have one question though...the link says Autorun.ini...but I don't see a .ini file. I do see an Autorun.inf file though. Just curious if I'm right in assuming it's the same file and that the page just has a typo there. I looked it up and it sounds like it is the one I should be deleting...just want to check before I delete the wrong file.

Anyway, it has started doing it on my small, six gig external hard drive now, so I have plans to back all that up to a much bigger external drive. Then I'm going to try deleting the autorun.inf file from the external, hopefully it'll fix it. Then I'll move to the hard drive.

Don't know if this makes sense to any of you, but the autorun.inf files on both the c and my external just repeat this over and over:

[autorun]
shellexecute=munica.scr

I'm not 100% sure what that means, but I have a vague idea. I guess [autorun] is the title or something and shellexecute is the command for what's supposed to come up when you double click the drive. I'm completely lost on the munica.scr part though.