W2000Pro/PCLinuxOS - Windows Explorer takes forever to load
 

Since I installed PCLinuxOS on a second hard drive, when I boot into Windows and click on either My Computer or Windows Explorer it takes several minutes to display the drive contents. This may or may not be related to MS Office as there is also a long delay when I click on Start, Documents. During this time my computer is locked up and I cannot do anything.

Here is what I did. I created two partitions on the second drive and then installed PCLinuxOS from the LiveCD. I did not install a boot loader as I was concerned with mucking up Windows. Instead, if I want to boot PCLOS I go into the bios and select the second drive as the First Boot device. If I want to boot to Windows I go into the bios and select the first drive as the First Boot Device.

I cannot see how this could have affected my Windows, but it seems to have. PCLinuxOS works great, and Windows still works as well with the exception of the long delay while it is searching the hard drive.

Any thoughts? Newbie language please. Thanks.

I believe your problem is in windoze. Since all you have done is add PCLinux on another HD, the only thing that makes sense to me is before you had windoze accessing that drive. PCLinux uses different file systems that windoze doesn't understand. Installing linux would have formatted space that linux understands. Have a look in windoze for any partitions on the second HD it is trying to access. Remove them if you can, and try again.

Windows2000 is seeing the Linux drive
 

I have narrowed this problem down to the fact that W2k can see the Linux drive for some reason, but of course cannot read it which is causing the delay.

Windows2000 is the master on the primary controller
PCLinuxOS is the slave on the primary controller
It has a Linux Swap formatted swap partition and a Journalised FS:ext3 root partition. From what everyone says Windows should not even recognize the existence of this drive.

Any thoughts?

Moved: This thread is more suitable in General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

That is correct. The file systems you have choosen are not recognized by windoze. It can neither read or write them. Those file systems are not causing your problem. I have a tripple boot system, W98 does not know my two linux systems exist. :cool:

Split Personalities?
 

Oddly, I think camorri both right and wrong. He's right that if Linux was installed after W2K, then it may well think that drive is a resource it should have available. However, he's wrong about it not being able to see the "drive" (as hardware). It knows the drive is there, just not what the heck to do with it. Since it knew about the drive, knows the drive is still there, and thought it could use it - now that it has a filesystem it can't understand, W2K is trying like mad to access a resource that is no longer available. You might want to do a registry search to see if that other drive is referenced anywhere.

Windows sees Linux drive problem fixed
 

I resolved the problem by removing the linux partitions in Windows Drive Management then immediately booting to the linux LiveCD and re-installing PCLOS.

I believe the problem may have been caused originally because the second drive had data on it so I formatted it FAT32 to remove it. During this process Windows obviously saw the drive and, as suggested, must have made some notation somewhere in the registry that it existed. Why it was still visible after the Linux install is a mystery but it's gone now. Thanks for your suggestions.