Scandisk Problems 1

[EnCocytus]

I have an old HP 450mhz 128 mb pc, running 98 se. I turned it on the other week, and got the 'OS not found error'. I attatched the HD to another PC as a slave to see if it was a bad HD or another problem. Whenever I tried to access the old hd, my newer system crashed. So I put a brand new WD HD in my old PC. At first whenever I ran Scandisk, it would tell me that my brand new HD might have a surface problem and needed a thorough scan. After completing the surface scan, no problems were found. But if I ran scandisk again, it did the same thing. Finally it stopped after a while, and then recently it runs scandisk evertime i start windows. No matter how I shut it down. After it finished the scandisk, I get the message that scandisk failed. Does anybody know what the problem is? I can't seem to figure it out. 1001100 1110101 1101011 1100101

 

[jsauce]

Open the msdos.sys file in your root directory with an editor. It will be read-only and hidden. You will need to remove the read-only attribute to be able to edit it. Add the line:

Autoscan=0

in the section marked [Options]
just place it on a line by itself under the other options there.

This will prevent Windows from autoscanning the disk at boot. Once in windows you should really do a thorough scan with scandisk or download a different disk scanning software and use it.
John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator

 

[34534534534555]

I used to get a similar problem in terms of scandisk and shutdown with 98se.

Are you sure scandisk is completing and then saying failed, mine used to fail due to something writing to the drives, try, when in windows to close everything that is not essential for your computer to run, anti-virus the lot, make sure it is not doing anything, even stop the screensaver, then run scandisk and complete a full scan. Then run defrag. Then enable your screensaver and any other apps. you may have disabled.

Now try restarting, if the same error occurs then sorry not to be of any help.

Please post back with any comments as this helps to further our knowledge.

Good Luck! _________________________________________________
Create like a God, Command like a King, Work like a slave..

 

[EnCocytus]

When I use scandisk while in windows, it says that there might be surface errors, and starts a thorough scan. When it finishes, it declares there were no problems. So, the scan is completing in Win. But not on boot. I think jsauce's advice will work great for the boot up problem. Thanx jsauce. But does anybody know why scandisk in windows always thinks there might be a surface error? 1001100 1110101 1101011 1100101

 

[jsauce]

When a disk is scanned for errors only logical errors can actually be repaired. Physical errors on the other hand cannot be repaired but rather marked as bad. The problem seems to be that sometimes the software that is scanning the disk can mistake a sector as bad when it is not, or sometimes think it is okay when it is bad. Nothing is 100% which can lead to problems. I recommend using a strong disk scanner like Norton which seems to be better at testing these issues. When a bad sector is found the software attempts to relocate the data there to another place that is not bad, but sometimes this cannot be done and you will end up with junk that can be discarded. If you do a thorough scan in windows and it says it hasn't found any errors there could still be errors so its best to try different software. John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator