The specific situation was this: I saw an article in Computer News about flash drive failures. The general idea was: “Although flash drives support hot-swapping, sometimes hot-swapping can cause system problems, so it's best not to hot-swap a flash drive too often.” To avoid system problems, I plugged in the flash drive before booting one time, and then started the computer. After booting, Explorer did not show the “Removable Disk” drive letter that should have been there, so I had to unplug the flash drive and plug it in again, but there was still no response. I left the flash drive plugged in and restarted the machine. During boot, the system prompted that it had found new hardware (the flash drive driver had already been installed, and I had used it normally for some time, and it had been used as hot-swappable). I followed the prompts all the way through, and in the end the system said the driver for that hardware had been installed. But Explorer still had no drive letter for the flash drive. In this situation, I wanted to open “My Documents,” but after double-clicking it, I got the message “Can't load Common_RC.dll”. After I clicked OK, the message box disappeared and “My Documents” opened too, but there were no files or folders inside. Double-clicking other drive letters also produced that same English message. Clicking OK would open that partition, but the contents inside were no longer the same as before. When I looked carefully, I found that an extra partition had appeared out of nowhere. And it was an extra D: drive, the one where “My Documents” was located (I had put the Documents folder on D
, while the original D: drive had become E:, and the contents inside “My Documents” there had also decreased. The files I wanted to move onto the flash drive were downloaded by an offline browser. I double-clicked the shortcut for the offline browser, and after opening it I found that the tasks that had already been downloaded had turned into icons for tasks that had not been downloaded at all. I had no choice but to shut down.
What was even stranger was that after getting off work in the afternoon, I turned on the machine, then plugged in the flash drive and opened Explorer. The removable disk drive letter appeared. When I opened the flash drive letter, there were actually two new things inside: one was the contents of “My Documents,” and the other was the folder where the offline browser saved downloaded files. I had never copied these two things, but just because of the operations I described above, those two folders somehow ended up inside the flash drive. And those two folders were quite large; even if I had copied them, there should have been a file-moving process of nearly ten minutes. But without my doing any copy operation, those two folders were automatically copied onto the flash drive, and there wasn't even any prompt showing a file copy process.
Explanation: I am using Windows 98 Second Edition. The first time I used this flash drive, I plugged it in after booting, then the system prompted that it had found new hardware and asked for the Windows 98 installation disc. The system automatically searched for the driver, and then it could be used normally. It is an “Yikang” brand flash drive, and it did not come with a driver disk.
, while the original D: drive had become E:, and the contents inside “My Documents” there had also decreased. The files I wanted to move onto the flash drive were downloaded by an offline browser. I double-clicked the shortcut for the offline browser, and after opening it I found that the tasks that had already been downloaded had turned into icons for tasks that had not been downloaded at all. I had no choice but to shut down.What was even stranger was that after getting off work in the afternoon, I turned on the machine, then plugged in the flash drive and opened Explorer. The removable disk drive letter appeared. When I opened the flash drive letter, there were actually two new things inside: one was the contents of “My Documents,” and the other was the folder where the offline browser saved downloaded files. I had never copied these two things, but just because of the operations I described above, those two folders somehow ended up inside the flash drive. And those two folders were quite large; even if I had copied them, there should have been a file-moving process of nearly ten minutes. But without my doing any copy operation, those two folders were automatically copied onto the flash drive, and there wasn't even any prompt showing a file copy process.
Explanation: I am using Windows 98 Second Edition. The first time I used this flash drive, I plugged it in after booting, then the system prompted that it had found new hardware and asked for the Windows 98 installation disc. The system automatically searched for the driver, and then it could be used normally. It is an “Yikang” brand flash drive, and it did not come with a driver disk.