disk utilities fail on c:. . .

[bridgeofjedge]

good day and i continue to receive error message on pc when attempting to a. open recycling bin on c: (though rb on e: is accessible), receiving error message "unable to access c: as it is in use by another disk utility. finish with disk utility and try again.". . . nor can i utilitize norton speed disk/ disk optimizer on c:, though d: and e: are accessible, and not only norton sd and do, but windows defrag and scandsk cannot access c:, resulting in the afore-mentioned error message. . . (side note: when attempting norton speed disk the message comes up saying "cannot access c: as it is in use by unknown disk utility, or is an unknown file system". . .)
this has been going on for over a week now! the only issues i can consider, the only changes made in that time period were the use of spybot s&d, playing with snort/ guardian, and opening an emergency floppy on my computer, though it was from another computer i am attempting to reconfigure, to which i received the error message "this disk is for ibm computers only.". . . i also installed axcrypt during that period. . .

any assistance is greatly appreciated. . . in meantime, i cannot sleep nor eat nor articulate a complete thought! and my disk c: is an absolute mess!
merci beaucoup for yr time,
j.edge.

[mjc]

i also installed axcrypt during that period. . .

Are you protecting/encrypting any files/folders on the fly?

If so you ARE using another utility on the drive....axcrypt.

Try temporarily disabling axcrypt.

There is nothing in Spybot that will hold a drive like that.

[bridgeofjedge]

"Are you protecting/encrypting any files/folders on the fly?"

as far as i know, meaning that i have not conciously encrypted any specific folders as of yet, and unless axcrypt automatically runs a program on certain files, it shld not be activated but only installed. . . but my question is-- how wld i temporarily disable axcrypt? wld that be done on an quit-task page? or shld i do so in the program itself?

i really should read about axcrypt, research her functions/ applications with a bit more depth than what i currently understand (nil.). . . thank you for yr response.

j.edge.