'There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into driveDeviceHarddisk1DR2'

This error message started to appear after a friend put her USB memory stick into my computer. Now it keeps reappearing. I have tried to put her memory stick back in to see if that would get rid of it, but it didn't make a difference. The error message keeps coming up randomly, especially when I go into other drives other than C:. It asks me to select "continue, retry, or cancel but neither can be executed and I have to keep working with the error message on the screen until I close down the computer. I am running XP. Can you help?

Re: Disk drive error

Did she/you just pull the memory stick out or did you use the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the system tray? If the former, put any memory stick in a USB port, then use the Safely Remove Hardware icon to remove it.

That MAY fix the problem. If not, this file is used by Quicktime. It is used by Quicktime in order to check for updates at the Quicktime.com site. In order to remove it from the system tray, perform the following steps:

1. Open Quicktime. 2. Select Edit > Preferences > QuickTime Preferences. 3. The QuickTime settings box will open. Select "Update Check" from the dropdown menu. 4. On the bottom of the screen, you will notice a checkbox for "Check for updates Automatically", uncheck it and close out Quicktime.

The QTTask.exe file will no longer start up.

Re: Disk drive error

Your computer (apparently) has had it's BIOS (on the mainboard) set to look for the USB drives when booting. Consequently, when it finds the USB drive there are no operating system boot files to be found.

I would guess that you (or someone) has inadvertantly incorrectly answered an error or query message that your BIOS has flashed up and now you are stuck with the result.

You will need to adjust the "boot order" in the BIOS of your computer to reflect you main hard drive as the second boot device and probably best to leave the CD/DVD drive as the primary boot device.

If adjusting the BIOS is beyond you (some BIOS' are difficult to configure let alone get in to) maybe someone handy can help you. This is a common problem with people using USB flash drives and external hard drives. I have struck a server mainboard BIOS which just wouldn't handle leaving a USB hard drive attached at boot up time.

Good luck, Priebs.

Re: Disk drive error

If you know when that problem appeared, try doing a system restore. e.g. the day before that error occurred

Re: Disk drive error

If it hasn't been fixed yet - I suggest going into 'System' 'Hardware''Device Manager' and removing your USB drives completely. Re-boot and let XP automatically find all your USB drives again.