All of a sudden Word wouldn’t save. If you chose “Save” nothing would happen. “Save As” wouldn’t bring up anything. Well, after a long search I found the solution to my problem. I had been using a USB external drive from Western Digital – which is a great little drive, but the software that come with it – WD Sync – is the devil. Stupid Machine clued me in:

Invalid Drive J:

The problem began with a simple routine update. Sunbelt’s Counterspy had been happily protecting my workstation for months when I got the message that update failed. I ignored the problem for a time until an MS Office 2003 update failed saying – Error 1327.Invalid Drive: J:\.

What prey tell does drive J:\ have to do with it? Being the drive letter assigned to USB sticks and the like it should have no effect on anything especially as no USB thing was plugged it at the time. Other weirdness ensued which pointed to the cause being a recently purchased WD Passport hard disk. The included software, WDSync, had burrowed it’s little tentacles into Windows so that when any USB stick was assigned drive J: a WDSync folder was created on it. Delete it, it would just come back again. With the error code in hand the solution from Microsoft KB 327763 meant diving into the registry for the first time in months.

The registry is now edited, Western Digital drive now formatted and WDSync obliterated. Counterspy is happy, Office is happy. Stupid machine!

Thanks Stupid Machine!