Pics2Exe takes over hard drive

[charles beasley]

Having been a long time Macintosh user in my profession (photography) I was so impressed with Pics2Exe, that I first tried to run it in emulation mode on my Mac,(VirtualPC), and with that not working I promptly got a PC (Dell 4550, 1.8 Pentium 4, 768 MB Ram, 60 & 120 GB drives, Windows XP Home.

I have all program files on C drive (60 GB unpartitioned) and have all my document files on a second (120 GB) partitioned hard drive (P=Portraits, W=Weddings, S=Photoshp Scratch Disk.)

There are about 8 or 10 Pics2Exe sets of files (.exe's, .pte's and autoruns) stored on partition (W) along with all the digtial image files.

For the second time now Pics2Exe has "taken over" the W partition. I have a shortcut to it on the desktop, the icon for which has changed from the hard drive image to a program icon, and when I double click on it, I get an error message for example:

"Windows cannot find

Lewright_Baker_Slideshow.exe.

This program is needed for opening files

of type 'File'.

Type in the executable file to be used instead:"

The same thing happens if I try to acces the partition's contents in "My Computer", but when I go via the Windows Explorer rout, I can get to the contents.

This first occurred about ten days ago and I was able to get the icon back by going back several weeks via the restore function. I also unistalled Pics2Exe, downloaded the latet version (not the beta) and installed it.

I have since the first time run Norton Systems works, which shows nothing wrong.

Today the same thing has happened again.

THE VERY LAST THING I DID BEFORE THS HAPPENED THIS TIME WAS TO CREATE A SLIDESHOW, SAVE THE .EXE, THE .PTE, AND THE INF TO THE W DRIVE, AND BURN A CD OF THE .EXE AND THE .INF FOR THE CUSTOMER.

If this had happened on the Mac I'm pretty sure rebuilding the desktop would have fixed it, but being new to PCs, I have been able to find no such procedure for the PC.

Can anyone shed any light on what's happening, and the remedy?

I might add that this is the very first problem of any sort I have had in seven months on the PC.

[nobeefstu]

If your saving your Show files to root of your W DRIVE ... this is creating your issue.

The file creating your issue is the AUTORUN.INF ... DO NOT save it to the ROOT of any DRIVE. (Unless it's for auto loading a CD )

Save it to a folder and the issue should resolve itself.

[charles beasley]

Nobeefstu-Thanks for the reply, but all the autoruns are in folders. (Unless there is one that got accidentally saved to the root and has become invisible.)

The more I have thought about this, the last thing I did in the chain this last time was to burn the CD. Are there any known issues visa vi Easy CD Creator and Pics2

Exe and/or Windows XP partiotioning scheme?

[nobeefstu]

Charles,

You be surprised how easy the (accident) Autorun.inf may have got copied to the ROOT of your W DRIVE.

Im not aware of any other issues that can "just create" this issue.

It is possible to create your own Icon labels for your DRIVES ... but not just by accident.