Waiting for the other shoe to be dropped by a new disk installation...

[grayone]

I've posted this in the Windows 98 Forum but have gotten no responses so I thought I would post it here as it does belong in both areas.&nbsp;&nbsp;Here goes:<br><br>After much grief I finally took out a 4 gig drive moved an 8 gig drive and installed a new 20 gig drive.&nbsp;&nbsp;The 8 gig drive was a dual boot to WIN95 and WIN98.&nbsp;&nbsp;Had assorted problems along the way but thought I finally got it right.&nbsp;&nbsp;The 2 gig FAT16 partition on the 20 gig primary drive is for WIN95 and following that is a 13 gig FAT32 partition for WIN98 (now second edition).&nbsp;&nbsp;Following that are two 2 gig FAT16 partitions for assorted purposes.&nbsp;&nbsp;The 8 gig drive has been reset to four 2 gig FAT16 partitions for assorted purposes.&nbsp;&nbsp;The new drive is now dual boot WIN95 and WIN 98 second edition.<br><br>At one point in this process I had a file reported to be cross linked by scandisk in WIN 98 and I corrected that.&nbsp;&nbsp;The WIN 98 system then had a fatal problem causing me to reinitialize and reload the WIN 98 partition.&nbsp;&nbsp;Everything seems to be okay until I now try to run scandisk.&nbsp;&nbsp;After only a few seconds I am told I am out of memory on a 256 meg system with nothing of significance running.&nbsp;&nbsp;It appears to be somehow related to a FAT table issue, but, I don't know how.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have tried to run scandisk in safe mode and the same thing happens.&nbsp;&nbsp;Of course, disk defragmenter will not run with this problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;But, a funny thing happened on the way to trying to solve this problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;Scandisk will run to completion if I shut down the system imporperly and restart.&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet it will not run in Win98 proper.&nbsp;&nbsp;It will run on all of the other partitions.&nbsp;&nbsp;Since then I have loaded at least 2 more gigs of software into this partition and have had no problems although I still can't run scandisk or defragmenter on this WIN 98 partition.&nbsp;&nbsp;It seems like I'm waiting for something to kick me in the rear end.<br><br>The BIOS does correctly report a 20 gig drive and an eight gig drive.&nbsp;&nbsp;The BIOS is as up-to-date as it will get (0109) as ASUS is no longer generating new updates for the TXP4 boards. <br>

 

[clivo]

Hi grayone<br><br>What is of significance here is that DOS scandisk is running, but not Windows 98 scandisk. (That's if I understand the sequence of events properly, and I think I do.) The scandisk that runs from improper shutdown is a DOS version. At this stage, depending on what's in config.sys and autoexec.bat, you're basically using 1 meg RAM. Once you're in Windows its obviously a different story. Sounds to me like you may have a memory management problem, or defective memory somewhere past 1 meg. But this should show up (I think) in other applications?<br> <p>Clive<br><a href=mailto:clive@digitalsky.co.za>clive@digitalsky.co.za</a><br><a href= > </a><br>I assemble and sell these things.

 

[Alt255]

I had a similar problem that seemed to correct itself. Scandisk (running on startup or booted to a floppy) ran fine and reported no problems. Running in Windows, Scandisk crashed the system with blue screens reporting &quot;Unable to write to disk in drive D:&quot; (then C:, E: and F.<br>I was able to identify the source of the blue screens with a little experimentation. I relocated the Windows swap file to a different drive and, sure enough, the first blue screen pointed toward that drive. Any drive containing the swap file was always the first drive to report an error.<br>It took only a little thought on my part to conclude that whatever error Scandisk was generating was causing Windows to lock access to the drives. Windows was unable to swap memory to drive C: so it tried the others and gave up, not realizing that it was preventing itself from staying alive.<br><br>The preceeding narrative might not pertain to your problem. But it <i>could</i>. One day the computer was shut down improperly and scandisk reported that the FAT copies on C: didn't match (go Scandisk, what could it hurt?) The error was corrected, Windows started normally and I haven't had a problem with Scandisk since.<br><br>But now, any virus scanner I run in Windows results in the same successive blue screens. (The DOS versions, executed from bootable floppies don't see anything nasty). The problem with Scandisk may have been a corrupted FAT that it refused to correct on many passes. The problem with the virus scanners may be an abnormal boot sector that the best and brightest refuse to identify and correct. My final solution (still pending) will be to copy my data from physical drive C:, do a low-level format with the manufacturer's software, fdisk, normal format and reinstall everything.<br><br>My point in this rambling post is that there may be multiple problems with the drive. One of them may be the weird configuration. (I don't fault you here. My boot drive is C: but my Windows drive is D: and it has resulted in many problems over the last 10 years.)<br><br>I guess there may be some merit in that &quot;final solution&quot;. Sometimes it is more cost effective to wipe the slate and start from scratch. I assume most of your data is still on the 8gb drive(?). Go to the 20gb manufacturer's website and check to see if any problems have been reported with that particular model. If not, download their disk utility (pardon my presumptions but I assume it is a Maxtor. I am, honestly, using a new 20gb Maxtor as a paperweight.)<br><br>Then perform the final solution. It could save you from many headaches over the years.<br><br> <p> <br><a href=mailto: > </a><br><a href=

http://www.vorpalcom.com>A

plain black box</a><br>

 

[grayone]

Thank you both for replying.&nbsp;&nbsp;Clivo, memory problems do not appear in any applications.&nbsp;&nbsp;Large graphics programs and files do not cause any faults (or at least they haven't so far).<br><br>Alt255, I don't get blue screens of death (BSOD).&nbsp;&nbsp;I get a dialog box which reports the lack of memory and allows an OK to be selected and I can continue which will close down scandisk.&nbsp;&nbsp;I then can continue to use the system without any other problems evident.&nbsp;&nbsp;I tried your suggestion of reassigning the swap file to the D: drive (the second physical drive) and it had no effect on the problem when I tried to scandisk the C: drive (the first physical drive with the dual boot).<br><br>I have run system resources and found the allocated memory is 173.6 MB, the locked memory is 68.1 MB, the other memory is 103.4 MB and the unused physical memory is 120.8 MB when starting scandisk.&nbsp;&nbsp;The allocated dropped to 150.8 MB and the unused to 142.7 MB when the error dialog box was on the screen.&nbsp;&nbsp;BTW, the swappable dropped from 69.7 MB to 47.3 MB with the locked memory and the other memory remaining constant.&nbsp;&nbsp;The implication here seems to say that the second memory chip is being accessed and appears to be working fine.&nbsp;&nbsp;The full message in the dialog box is as follows: &quot;Your computer does not have enough available memory to complete this task. If any other programs are running, quit one or more of them, and then click OK&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp;It offers a retry option, which when selected causes the same result.&nbsp;&nbsp;When I check to see what is running there is nothing unexpected active.&nbsp;&nbsp;When I click OK the completion percentage jumps from about two percent to around 70 percent and then the system reports out the same message (in another form which allows on for an OK) and then returns to the startup dialog box allowing me to close it.&nbsp;&nbsp;The processing shows it is initializing, then checking file allocation tables and then folders, it then repeats the checking file allocations and then folders again before it presents the error message dialog box which allows for the retry or cancel.<br><br>FWIW, all drives are, and have been, Western Digital Caviar drives.&nbsp;&nbsp;As to Alt255's assumption of where my data is-it is not correct.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have a great deal of data on the three FAT16 partitions and now some on the new FAT32.&nbsp;&nbsp;The 8gb drive inherited the data from the 4 gb drive which was replaced.<br><br>Does either of you, or anyone else, have any other ideas as to how to better define the problem?

 

[fenris]

Which version of scandisk are you using to scan the partitions. <br>&gt;Scandisk will run to completion if I shut down the system imporperly and restart.&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet it will not run in Win98 proper.&nbsp;&nbsp;It will run on all of the other partitions.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>It sounds to me like you are using a version of scandisk that doesn't recognize fat32, the win98 partition. You could try the win98 scandisk and see if that works. If you still have the 8gb disk in the computer, I would put win95 on that one and leave the 20Gb drive to win98. I found that having two O/S's on the same drive in different partitions usually doesn't work well. When ever I upgrade my computer (every year or so) I keep the old parts and after a year or two I have enough to build another machine which I sell or put to use. If it is feasible, the best bet would to put them on seperate machines.<br><br>But that is my two cents....<br><br> <p> fenris<br><a href=mailto:fenris@hotmail.com>fenris@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>

 

[grayone]

fenris, thanks for your input.&nbsp;&nbsp;Note, I have never had Win95 or Win98 first edition in this partition on this disk.&nbsp;&nbsp;I am using the Win98se version of scandisk with all the .ini settings for memory at the auto entry settings.&nbsp;&nbsp;After the failures I even tried to set the memory settings to some settings other than auto but have since reset them.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have run the 8 gb disk in the same manner, a Win98 on a FAT32 partition with all the rest FAT16 partitions.&nbsp;&nbsp;No problems.

 

[clivo]

The scandisk that runs from an improper shutdown is scandisk.exe located in the Windows\command directory. This is a DOS 6.22 programme.<br><br>The scandisk that Windows runs is scandskw.exe and is located in the Windows directory.<br><br>So the situation is that DOS is able to scan the partition, but not Windows 98. At the stage that DOS does scandisk, no Windows drivers have been loaded. (Which raises a question: whats in config.sys and autoexec.bat?) If you think this is a FAT related problem, then according to microsoft this issue can occur if you are running Windows on a hard disk that is larger than 8 gigabytes (GB) in size and has a cluster size less than 8 kilobytes (KB). This configuration may be created if you use a third-party disk tool to create a partition on a hard disk that is larger than 8 (GB) in size and has a cluster size less than 8 KB. <br>Check Q229154 for more details<br><br><br><br> <p>Clive<br><a href=mailto:clive@digitalsky.co.za>clive@digitalsky.co.za</a><br><a href= > </a><br>I assemble and sell these things.

 

[grayone]

Clivo, thank you for your last post.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have reviewed Q229154 and that does indeed acknowledge the problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;Unfortunately, there is no resolution for this problem at this time.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have even tried changing the cluster size from 8KB to 16KB and it did nothing to solve the problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have gone to the PowerQuest web site and found nothing relevant.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have sent them an e-mail discribing the problem and asking for a solution.&nbsp;&nbsp;I, and anyone reading this, will have to wait until they respond.&nbsp;&nbsp;Thanks again.

 

[aklein]

Alt255 said:<br>&gt;The problem with the virus scanners may be an abnormal &gt;boot sector that the best and brightest refuse to identify &gt;and correct. My final solution (still pending) will be to &gt;copy my data from physical drive C:, do a low-level format &gt;with the manufacturer's software, fdisk, normal format and &gt;reinstall everything.<br><br>Did you ever try fdisk /mbr?

 

[Alt255]

Fdisk /mbr has been hyped for years as the solution to all hard drive woes. I never never heard of anyone using it to their advantage but I personally know three people who made their hard drives unbootable by using this &quot;undocumented&quot; solution.<br><br>At best, it is a trick that should be performed after weighing every other option. Then asking, &quot;Why am I doing this? Do I even understand the purpose of the Master Boot Record? <p> <br><a href=mailto: > </a><br><a href=

http://www.vorpalcom.com>A

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[edfair]

Only solution to certain problems. Have NEVER had any problem with it. Has pulled me out of problems three or four times a year since it was implemented. But you better know what you have before you use it. Not too compatable with anything that doesn't like DOS fat stuff. <p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>

 

[Alt255]

Good point about the DOS fat, edfair. And Fdisk /mbr doesn't seem to be too keen on drive-enhancing firmwares and drives formatted under incorrect parameters (haven't seen much of that recently, since the advent of drive-autodetect, but it still happens).<br><br>I actually tried the /mbr switch about 10 years ago on a drive that appeared to have corruption in the third record of the partition table. Guess what... after using /MBR, all four partitions disappeared. I had to recreate them from scratch and reformat the hard drive. DOH!. Live and learn.<br><br>Pardon if I seem a little wary. <p> <br><a href=mailto: > </a><br><a href=

http://www.vorpalcom.com>A

plain black box</a><br>