i have an external hard drive and when i go to acess things in it - i get an error from internet exploer that say it has encounterd an erorr and must close
why is this happining and what can i do to resolve it?

Does this happen when you do this in windows explorer?
Try accessing it through the command prompt, or better, get the new version of internet explorer, may help.

no its only does it if my internet connection is on and ive ran a virus scan by norton and nothing there. leave the internet connection off and it doesn't do it. pop up the ie error response? any ideas how to stop it ./ also i cheched my file types and for mpeg there set to play in real player ?

try this, is the quickest thing i can think of;
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/dow.../getitnow.mspx