View Full Version : DOS
Polett
07-23-2003, 07:24 AM
What was the comman in DOS to check the HD and did it work with win98??
was it chkdsk c:
?
...and the soul afraid of dyin'... That never learns to live...
Steven Edwards
07-23-2003, 07:42 AM
chkdsk c: just gives you some info...
You could do scandisk c: to check your hard drive for errors. There is a ScanDisk in Windows under Start->Accessories->System Tools that does the same thing.
-Steven
Polett
07-23-2003, 08:18 AM
Thanx Steve.
I know about the one in windows... forgot about doing it in DOS. Thing is this is a client's computer i have to take the info out off as win won't run anymore on it... just wanted to know if HD was bad or he did something to it.
...and the soul afraid of dyin'... That never learns to live...
Steven Edwards
07-23-2003, 08:21 AM
No problem. Is it a Windows XP machine?
-Steven
BlkDiamond
07-23-2003, 09:24 AM
Windows XP doesn't ship with the traditional "scandisk" program anymore because it uses NTFS. You can however run chkdsk with the "/f" switch to fix some errors.
In regards to getting the data off, if the file system is indeed NTFS, you'll need to create a NTFS boot disk with some method to get the data off or put the drive in another running XP system to transfer the data, the latter being the easiest and quickest.
"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created
them."
Steven Edwards
07-23-2003, 11:47 AM
Thanks for that note about ScanDisk.
Something that may be easier would be to boot from the XP boot disk, if it's XP, and repair the master boot record from there.
But really, the proper solution all depends on what kind of error message you get and when it appears/happens. If you could let us know those things, it would help.
-Steven
Polett
07-24-2003, 09:13 AM
It's a stinky gatewAy 2000 (pent.II 300mhz i think... forgot)
Win. 98. It just freazes as it starts, it goes on the win screen and after says failure to something (sorry for the lack of detail but, I haven't hooked it up here yet).
...and the soul afraid of dyin'... That never learns to live...
Steven Edwards
07-24-2003, 09:41 AM
It doesn't sound like the HD. Have you tried safe booting into Windows?
-Steven
Polett
07-28-2003, 06:48 AM
Steve, I tried safe start but if froze again, i kept getting the "failure to read drive c:" I went into DOS and started windows from there, at times it worked, others it froze. Scandisk froze at 75%. When in window, at times i coud open progs, others it couldnt find the path.
Anyhow I took out what i needed and formatted the HD it said 0.16mb were bad.
Sound like a virus right?
...and the soul afraid of dyin'... That never learns to live...
BlkDiamond
07-28-2003, 08:27 AM
Doubt it was a virus. It's rare that it would have physically damaged your HD. They don't last for ever and it's not uncommon for a drive to lose a few bad clusters.
It sounds like you have a bit of an older system (PII/300), you may want to invest in a new HD. They pretty dirt cheap - CompUSA has a 80Gb for $49. I'm sure you can get them cheaper online, but I'm afraid once you start losing clusters on a drive it's best vto replace it instead of risking any further data loss.
Any how, if you check the same drive check it regularly for problems.
"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created
them."
Steven Edwards
07-28-2003, 10:55 AM
It wouldn't be a virus. BlkDiamond is right on when he says that disks get bad sectors normally... I have quite a few, I'm sure. If you do get a new hard drive, get one under 137gb in size or you will need to get a new controller card to use it.
That specific error sounds like either the hard drive is bad or the controller card is bad. A new system would probably be your best bet.
-Steven
[This message was edited by Steven Edwards on 07-28-03 at 02:03 PM.]