How do you repair FAT?

[mhobart2]

When my system tries to boot I it says can't read drive c: When I run scandisk it stops at the FAT tester and says it can't continue. Is there a way I can restore the FAT? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[cschaffer]

have you tried scanreg....maybe there is a regestry setting somewhere...most lickly though you have a corrupt boot file......you may need to reinstall..

CS

 

[mhobart2]

yes, I tried scanreg and it says the registry is corrupt. I ran a hard drive diagnostic utility on it and it has a fatal error on it that can't be repaired, even with format. So I already re-imaged the machine with a new hard drive. I just like to know if there are ways to fix things like this. Let me know if there is anything else that you can think of. Thanks.

Matt Hobart
CCNA, A+

 

[mscallisto]

Did you run scandisk without the repair option? If so it may report the error but not fix it.

You also might try to run fdisk /mbr to lay down a new master boot record. Can't hurt.

And finally have you checked for viruses?


much luck

 

[reghakr]

Matt,

Have you tried scanreg /restore?

Bad clusters can be fixed.
Bad sectors probably not.

If you have info you need, hook the drive up as a slave in another machine. it may not boot, but you may be able to access and save files this way.

reghakr

 

[edfair]

With norton disk editor you can physically change the data in the damaged FAT if it will read and write the sector.
The raw data is carried in two FATs so you would get the good info from the second fat and write it to the first fat.
Takes a long time to do it but worth it if you need to get access to important files. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Guest_imported]

Ya try fdisk /mbr, then do the scanreg.exe /fix and last but not least do a thorough scandisk.exe /fix. This should definitely fix your MBR. If you are running windows 95, the scanreg.exe does NOT come with it. You will have to download it.

 

[BOKA]

From personal experience, this is the best way to go - read article Q131431 on MS Technet.

 

[learning2]

I am going through this as well. I struggled with the issue and had a minor breakthrough with delpart.exe. However, fdisk still hangs on verifying drive integrity. BIOS recognizes the drive but the FAT tables are removed and drive integrity seems to be a problem.

Steps to take, though, are do scandisk without the autofix first. Then run scandisk /autofix . Attempt fdisk. Then run scandisk /surface . Attempt fdisk. Run delpart.exe . Attempt fdisk.

I am researching building a partition table manually but am not there yet.

Any comments are welcome and requested.

 

[PAndersen]

The old Norton Disk Doctor could quickly replace a
damaged FAT with the copy.

 

[Akito]

anyone got or have Frtree ?

 

[MiklK]

P Andersen -
Does "old" Norton Disk Doctor refer to the 2000 version? And does that mean that it's not part of NSW 2002, for example, and they did away with that functiuonality in that time period somewhere?
I have both and hope to be informed/educated about when the 'old' one stops and the less-useful version starts, if you happen to know...
thx! JMikl K
bigpygme@earthlink.net

 

[PAndersen]

I refer to Norton Utilities for MS-DOS. However, in Norton System Works 2000 version 3.0 you will still find the Disk Doctor , NDD.EXE . Probably, it is also included in newer versions. Before using it, start the machine in MS-DOS mode (not command-prompt window).

 

[MiklK]

Yes, NDD is in both versions of Norton System Works - I thought the reference to the 'old' version implied that a newer version was modified and did not provide the same functions, as sometimes happens... my misunderstanding, thx JMikl K
bigpygme@earthlink.net