Topic: 98se question. (Read 14992 times)

Maxillius · « **Reply #60 on:** January 16, 2004, 03:27:27 pm »

Be careful when booting in DOS mode. I've only done this once because the time I did it the thing wouldn't start Windows ever again, so I had to reinstall anyway.

Iceman · « **Reply #61 on:** January 16, 2004, 04:50:45 pm »

I did what you said, Sethan. Restarted in DOS mode, ran scandisk C and when it finished its thing (didn't get to the surface scan part) it said the free space is being reported incorrectly, fix, don't fix. I chose fix and then this message popped up.

Not enough free conventional memory to perform surface scan.

You may need to remark (REM) some device drivers from your CONFIG.SYS fle. Or, in your CONFIG.SYS you may need to load EMM386.EXE drive to load your other device drivers into upper Memory Blocks using DEVICEHIGH= statements.

This is kind of outta my league here, but it sounds almost like a bad ram problem.

Malystryx_XC · « **Reply #62 on:** January 16, 2004, 04:59:51 pm »

Hi Iceman, don't be scared... that's actually normal because you are booting to DOS without the proper device lines being loaded to setup HMS and XMS memory (ie. Himem.sys and EMM386.exe).

With Windows 98 you can still effectively do a scandisk from within the operating system. Just boot back to windows and click "Start>Run" and type "scandisk" at the prompt and press <ENTER>. It will bring up the graphical Scandisk utility and you can choose to check your drive from here. Just make sure (as was noted above) that you are choosing the "thorough" method so that it does a bad sector scan on your hard drive. It will alert you of any problems and give you the opportunity to fix them.

As was also previously mentioned, back up any important data first... just in case!

Iceman · « **Reply #63 on:** January 16, 2004, 05:01:58 pm »

Already did that, though I have a few e-mails I should print first, just in case.

Towelie · « **Reply #64 on:** January 16, 2004, 05:31:00 pm »

Quote:

Be careful when booting in DOS mode. I've only done this once because the time I did it the thing wouldn't start Windows ever again, so I had to reinstall anyway.

LOL, had that happen before under 95, there is a way to restore it without a re-install. After all, Windows was still running under DOS in those days

I would recommend start shopping for a replacement disk drive and plan on re-installing Windoze. Once it goes beyond a certain point, it's like some sort of cascade failure takes place and everything slowly gets screwed up (IMHO the registry gets corrupted beyond repair). A clean install on a new disk drive would be most reliable.

Of course you could always keep patching it together for a while. MAke sure there is actual bad sectors on the disk drive. There is one other fix for bad sectors if it's not physical. I think it is called a low level format (not the kind of format that DOS or Windows can do), the kind of formatting normally only done at the factory. But it sometimes can restore bad sectors, however it is a little risky. It has to be done properly with the exact software for it or else it will make your drive unusable until a correct format is done.

If it's just an old drive, chances are it's time to replace or do a low level format. I've restored a couple of old drives that way. I used to have to extend the life of them for cheaps wads. I extended an old Western Digital 80 megabyte drive (megabytes, not gigabytes) for them before that way. I kept that drive going until the bearings on it FINALLY wore out!

End of rant, have fun. We'll be here.

Iceman · « **Reply #66 on:** January 16, 2004, 07:14:36 pm »

See, I just bought this WD 120GB drive from Circuit City not 6 months ago. How would I go about transferring critical data to my secondary HD? (20GB). Is it possible to transfer the entire system? (OS?)

Javora · « **Reply #74 on:** January 17, 2004, 06:29:28 pm »

Malystryx makes some real good points and that point about xcopy is sheer genius. If the drive is still under warranty definitely send it back. That will give you an extra hard drive. I did the same thing about two months before I dumped my old Dell for my new system. That drive went bad just at the right time. Now I use that drive solely for backups. However if that drive is not under warranty then I still recommend destroying that hard drive to prevent anyone accessing any of your data.

Iceman · « **Reply #76 on:** January 17, 2004, 09:20:48 pm »

Well I did the scandisk surface scan through the GUI style, and it did find some bad sectors. However, me being the idiot that I am never told my mother she couldn't actually do ANYTHING until it finished, and so I had to restart. The second time it found no bad sectors. So we'll see. I've already backed up vital data to a memory stick and/or my second hard drive, so I should be good. But I AM going to buy a new hard drive, probably a smaller one round 80GB and swap out the older 20GB. If this continues it IS going back to WD though! (It's still warrantied). Thank you all so much for your wonderful help! This is why I'm proud to be a Taldrenite.

Towelie · « **Reply #77 on:** January 17, 2004, 09:24:44 pm »

WOW, WD is one of the few I have alot of faith in. Never lost a file on one yet.

It would seem it found and locked out those bad sectors on the first pass. Hope you get it stable again, but stay prepared to move it to a new drive. Sounds like you already got it under control.

Iceman · « **Reply #78 on:** January 17, 2004, 09:29:30 pm »

Thank god. I'm going to get a new Seagate 80GB and swap out the smaller 20GB. THen I think I'm going to buy XP Pro, install that on the new one and send the old one back to WD. sounds like a plan.

News:

Topic: 98se question. (Read 14992 times) var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

Maxillius

Iceman

Malystryx_XC

Iceman

Towelie

Javora

Iceman

Sirgod

Javora

Sirgod

Sethan

Towelie

Javora

Malystryx_XC

Javora

Sethan

Iceman

Towelie

Iceman

IKV Nemesis D7L

Topic: 98se question. (Read 14992 times)