BleepingComputer.com: Bug transferring files via thumb from XP SP2 to XP SP3 system

Okay, this is going to be hard to explain, which is probably why I can't find a thing on google. Bear with me, please:) My apologies if this is not the best place to post, I couldn't see an appropriate section.

I was helping a friend with her computer work when I encountered an odd bug I've never seen before. We were copying a selected number of files from one laptop to another using a 16GB USB thumb drive (hers, brand new). The files copy fine and appear as normal on the original computer. But once the thumb drive is loaded on the second laptop, certain files become corrupt somehow and instead of the files that should appear in each folder, there is just one file listing with a weird name containing characters like a capital U, sideways L, a curly ended u, etc. The name is the same every time, its only about 4 or 5 chars long and I didn't get a screen shot, sorry. The file shows as 0kb. Not every file or folder is affected and it seems that every folder that is affected originally contained JPEG files.

The weird file cannot be copied or deleted, the only way to get rid of it seems to be to format the thumb drive.

Also, there is another problem of a "ghost folder". In struggling to understand the bug, I copied only the files in the base folder, which appeared to be going through fine, onto the newly formatted thumb drive. Only files were selected, not any folders. When I took these over to the second laptop, one of the folders appeared on the thumb drive, with a corrupted file (as described above). Taking the thumb back to the original laptop, no folder. Show hidden files/folders was selected on both systems.

The original laptop is not connected to the internet and is running XP SP2. The second laptop is connected to the net and running XP SP3. Not sure if that makes any difference?

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance if you can help, it really has me stumped! If there is any other info you might need to puzzle it out or any suggestions for where I might better place this question to find someone who can help, just let me know.

Hi!

Firstly:

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Try a program called Unlocker. I've had problems like this before, and it seems to be able to get rid of the files just fine.

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I think this also sits in your 'corrupted files' issue. It's not only files that go corrupt, and weird things can happen when you have a file corruption issue.

As for the actual issue, I'm not really sure where to start (perhaps some of the other members may have better input). Anything could be causing this problem, such as:
1. Power issue with the drive
2. Running software
3. Driver problems
4. File system problems

For starters, let's try this:

• Click Start > Run
  
• Type "cmd" (without the quotes). This will open up a command prompt window
  
• Navigate to the thumb drive in question. E.g. if the drive was F, you'd type "F:"
  
• Type "chkdsk /r"

The length of time taken to complete this process will vary on the size of the drive, but it will cause Windows to go through the drive, look for errors and fix them accordingly.