All programs crash when saving after partition change

Question

I've got a bit of a strange problem, or at least one that I didn't anticipate. I used to have two partitions on my computer, C and D, both NTFS. Using a partition manager, I deleted the D partition and resized C to take up the whole space.

However, now when I try and save a file from any program (anything, including things like Paint and WordPad) the program crashes. No error messages, no nothing, it just exits silently. This only occurs when saving a new file (ie. to a new filename), re-saving existing files works fine.

I've done loads of things with partitions over the years and never had this problem. Any idea what I should do? I've tried reinstating the D partition (ie. just creating another partition called D), but that hasn't helped. I can't see any important references to D:\ in the registry. Any other ideas?

I'm using Windows XP on a laptop if that matters.

Updates:

• The event logs don't show anything related to this at all (as far as I can seE)
• ProcMon shows what looks like the standard accesses to the registry and so on. It doesn't seem to be trying to access any paths that don't exist. The last thing it does is close the Common Controls dialog box - although I (as the user) never see that dialog box appear.
• I've done what you suggested with ProcMon. The ProcessExit entry had a return code of SUCCESS, as did all the ThreadExit entries. There were various CreateFile entries, all of which also returned SUCCESS. Weird. I should point out, I don't know if I made it clear earlier, that the program exits as soon as I click on the Save toolbar button or menu item, ie. before the save dialog box is shown and I choose a file.
• I've tried running System File Checker (SFC /SCANNOW), but it wants a Windows XP Professional CD, and the only Windows CD I have is a different version. I'll try and find an XP Professional CD soon and try that again.
• I'm running chkdisk now

Answer 1

Note:

• After resizing the NTFS, have checked the structure of the file system - chkdsk?

Have you viewed the Event Viewer - maintains logs about program, security, and system events on your computer. You can use Event Viewer to view and manage the event logs, gather information about hardware and software problems, and monitor Windows security events. To access see here.

You can also use Procmon - which allows you to view and monitor processes running on a system. One useful ability: monitoring of process and thread startup and exit, including exit status codes.

Worse case scenario, use a Linux Live CD, mount the NTFS file system, and copy your files over to some external medium. Then format if possible with a fresh installation of Windows.

Edit:

Regarding testing the execution of mspaint:

• find the PID
• Using Procmon, filter according to mspaint's PID accordingly
• While mspaint is executing, save a file (via mspaint) to observe CreateFile operation, if possible, double click to see if the operation was successful
• If crash occurs, using Procmon see Process Exit, double click to view Exit Status?

Update:

As you are probably aware, Windows XP has the ability to protect itself from system instability caused by 3rd party software overwriting important system files (System File Checker). Please try and find the suitable disk to repair accordingly.

Answer 2

Did you use a program like TweakUI to change the location of the My Documents folder to the D partition? If so, change it to C and it should fix it.