http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18614
--- Comment #15 from rmaz@gmx.net 2011-04-20 05:45:53 CDT --- 1. Yes, I always removed ~/.wine before trying new things
2. Filesystem is ReiserFS 3.6
3. Running from the build tree shows same behavior
4. Running winecfg with "WINEDEBUG=+relay,+seh,+tid" WORKS, i.e., no error messages (a Gecko installer pops up and wants me to install Gecko, which I cancel for now), system32 is correctly populated (compare bug 25765 which now definitely seems to be related, if not the same), and I can open the Drive tab and autodedect or manually set my cdrom and other drives without error message. Removing .wine, and rerunning with an empty WINEDEBUG reliably reverts to the old behavior.
Likewise,
$ WINEDEBUG=+relay,+seh,+tid wine notepad
creates a correct .wine structure. I can then run winecfg without debug
$ winecfg
and don't get the drive problem.
INEDEBUG=+relay is apparently the critical setting and alone sufficient to ensure correct behavior. The others don't remove the problem, nor do +files or +mountmgr.
The requested log file is 182 MB and the best I can achieve (with xz -9e) is 1.5 MB, still too large to attach. Maybe without +relay, since this seems to remove the problem anyway?
I conclude that, at least in my case, this bug is a symptom of bug 25765.