FAT problem

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

randy nixon - 17 Jul 2003 20:24 GMT

I'm trying to fix a problem for a friend. Everytime he
starts up he gets the message.
"one of the more drives may have developed bad sectors.
Press enter to run scandisk with surface scan"

He runs it and it stops at 14%. Giving him the message
"scandisk encountrered a data error while reading the FAT
on drive C: This eror prevents scandisk from fixing this
drive."

When he checks the option to continue to windows anyway he
gets an illegal operation error for explorer. Any ideas?

Reply to this Message

Jeff Richards - 18 Jul 2003 00:31 GMT

The disk has developed a physical fault in the FAT area. Windows cannot
cope with a physical fault in this area (if it had occurred somewhere else
then Windows can 'map out' the affected area - this can't be done in the FAT
area).

Your friend should purchase a new disk and copy everything across. They can
then install the original disk as a second disk in the machine and download
and run disk drive diagnostics from the manufacturer's www site and see
whether the disk can be recovered. Note that with the current price of
disks it really isn't worth trying to find out ahead of time whether or not
the disk can be recovered - just get a new one, and if the old is worth
sticking with then that's a bonus.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP W95/W98

> I'm trying to fix a problem for a friend. Everytime he
> starts up he gets the message.
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> When he checks the option to continue to windows anyway he
> gets an illegal operation error for explorer. Any ideas?

Reply to this Message