I think the real issue is why is the application's process so slow to die on your PC. Mine exits within several seconds. I suggest you try using process explorer to see more details about the process than what task manager shows you. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sysinternals/bb89665
Cleaning up the path (in addition to uninstalling the 4 removable drives) seemed to fix the problem.
Sorry for the delay answering, I'd assumed I was automatically subscribed to get a email notification if anybody replied. " Hmm... what is "\Device\HardDisk\DR1" is that the device name of your hard drive or a removeable device? " Neither. I have a single 1.8TB physical drive (C:) and a virtual drive M: created via TrueCrypt. Both are NTFS. I have a drive D (my CD/DVD player) and drives E, F, G, and H (multiple card reader for SD cards etc.) listed as remov