Can't save over files, explorer / command line hang

[dcheel]

Hello,

I recently reinstalled Windows 7 on my Dell Studio 1555 laptop. I did this by booting from the Windows 7 upgrade disk that came with my machine (it was purchased just before 7 came out, and Dell sent the upgrade CD later).

I've installed very little on the machine - Firefox, dropbox, PDF-XChange Viewer.

One of the main uses I have for the laptop is to take it to class with me, open pdf notes from the teacher, and take notes using pdf xchange viewer. I've never had issues before. Now when I open a file, edit it, and try to save, it just gets stuck at "Saving Document, please wait". Similarly, if I try to copy files into or out of a folder, explorer hangs, and will stay hung for hours, until I kill and restart it. I've also noticed that there's often a green bar filling the address line in explorer that takes a long time to fill, and then stops around 95% full. I've also tried opening a command prompt and doing a move or copy from there, but it just hangs. I've let all of these hang for 24+ hours before killing them on my own.

At first I thought it was something with dropbox, since I was working mostly out of the dropbox folder, and it worked fine. But then I uninstalled dropbox, and I'm still having issues.

I've got Bitdefender Antivirus Free running, but I've tried disabling, and still had problems.

Any idea what I should try next? It feels like something has the files open and/or locked, but how do I figure out what?

Thanks,
DCHeel

 

[Layback Bear]

If it was my computer the first thing I would check is see how full the drive is. If you don't have room you will not be able to save anything and the system will work goofy.

Use this tutorial by Golden to post a picture of Disk Management.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

 

[dcheel]

Thanks for the response. The drive is currently 250GB free, 50 GB used.

Also, I have no problem creating new files. Or moving files into a folder where the same file name doesn't already exist. One of my workarounds has been to save files as new names each save. But then when I try to delete old files or move a file into the desired folder and over-write the old copy, it hangs.