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Windows Forum / Windows 98 / General Topics / April 2004Scandisk - boot area errors
Occasionally when I run Scandisk, I get a message about important information in the boot area of the give drive that might be damaged. This does happen on a regular basis, but I cannot directly trace it to forced resets due to blue screens or illegal operations. Sometimes the free space on my E: partition, which is around 13 GB, appears to go down to 1 GB or so. Running scandisk fixes that issue. Here is a copy of the log from the most recent scan: ------------------- ******************* Microsoft ScanDisk for Windows NOTE: If you use an MS-DOS program to view this file, some of the characters may appear incorrectly. Use a Windows program such as Notepad instead. Log file generated at 06:25 on 18.4.2004. ScanDisk used the following options: Standard test Drive DATA (E:) contained the following errors: The drive contained an error in its FSInfoSector. Resolution: Repair the error Results: Error was corrected as specified above. ScanDisk found errors on this drive and fixed them all. ------------------- My questions: 1) What exactly is the "FSInfoSector"? 2) What kind of errors are these and what could be causing them? Thanks for your input on the issue. Ivan The FSInfo sector , usually located in the sector following the boot sector, contains two pieces of information. The "FreeClusterCount" and the "NextAvailableCluster". The error is due to the fact that the actual amount of free clusters counted by scandisk does not match this recorded amount. Possibilities include any Windows file operation, where the file system may have created/deleted/resized a file, but for some reason did not update the count. (i.e. lockup, bad shutdown, incomplete write). Another thing that can corrupt the count, though probably very rare, is any program that does not use the DOS or Windows file services, but instead writes files to the disk directly but does not update the count. It is a very common and usually a trivial error, unless the count is so low that you experience failed writes due to "insufficient space". You could record the size of your drives before and after each scandisk to get the exact amount it differs. "Ivan B?tora" <xxx@xxx.xx> wrote in message news:uc5p4DTJEHA.208@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl... Occasionally when I run Scandisk, I get a message about important information in the boot area of the give drive that might be damaged. This does happen on a regular basis, but I cannot directly trace it to forced resets due to blue screens or illegal operations. Sometimes the free space on my E: partition, which is around 13 GB, appears to go down to 1 GB or so. Running scandisk fixes that issue. Here is a copy of the log from the most recent scan: ------------------- ******************* Microsoft ScanDisk for Windows NOTE: If you use an MS-DOS program to view this file, some of the characters may appear incorrectly. Use a Windows program such as Notepad instead. Log file generated at 06:25 on 18.4.2004. ScanDisk used the following options: Standard test Drive DATA (E:) contained the following errors: The drive contained an error in its FSInfoSector. Resolution: Repair the error Results: Error was corrected as specified above. ScanDisk found errors on this drive and fixed them all. ------------------- My questions: 1) What exactly is the "FSInfoSector"? 2) What kind of errors are these and what could be causing them? Thanks for your input on the issue. Ivan Glad to here that it is nothing serious. Is there no way to track this down further, though, i.e. what application could be causing it? Thanks for your help, Ivan The FSInfo sector , usually located in the sector following the boot sector, contains two pieces of information. The "FreeClusterCount" and the "NextAvailableCluster". The error is due to the fact that the actual amount of free clusters counted by scandisk does not match this recorded amount. Possibilities include any Windows file operation, where the file system may have created/deleted/resized a file, but for some reason did not update the count. (i.e. lockup, bad shutdown, incomplete write). Another thing that can corrupt the count, though probably very rare, is any program that does not use the DOS or Windows file services, but instead writes files to the disk directly but does not update the count. It is a very common and usually a trivial error, unless the count is so low that you experience failed writes due to "insufficient space". You could record the size of your drives before and after each scandisk to get the exact amount it differs. "Ivan Bútora" <xxx@xxx.xx> wrote in message news:uc5p4DTJEHA.208@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl... Occasionally when I run Scandisk, I get a message about important information in the boot area of the give drive that might be damaged. This does happen on a regular basis, but I cannot directly trace it to forced resets due to blue screens or illegal operations. Sometimes the free space on my E: partition, which is around 13 GB, appears to go down to 1 GB or so. Running scandisk fixes that issue. Here is a copy of the log from the most recent scan: ------------------- ******************* Microsoft ScanDisk for Windows NOTE: If you use an MS-DOS program to view this file, some of the characters may appear incorrectly. Use a Windows program such as Notepad instead. Log file generated at 06:25 on 18.4.2004. ScanDisk used the following options: Standard test Drive DATA (E:) contained the following errors: The drive contained an error in its FSInfoSector. Resolution: Repair the error Results: Error was corrected as specified above. ScanDisk found errors on this drive and fixed them all. ------------------- My questions: 1) What exactly is the "FSInfoSector"? 2) What kind of errors are these and what could be causing them? Thanks for your input on the issue. Ivan It would be very difficult. You would have to constantly monitor the cluster count record, the "actual" count, while at the same time monitor what processes are writing to the disk. It doesn't have to be a "third party" app. For example, mabey your system freezes in the middle of a write to the swap file. No damage done since the swap file is regenerated, but the count may still be corrupted. You could use trial and error. Run scandsk, reboot, run scandisk. If you get the error then you know it is something in the startup process. Repeat running one more or less app, depending. Not really worth the effort IMO, unless it happens after every fresh boot, or the count is wildy off. "Ivan B?tora" <xxx@xxx.xx> wrote in message news:ep8lPLUJEHA.3068@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl... Glad to here that it is nothing serious. Is there no way to track this down further, though, i.e. what application could be causing it? Thanks for your help, Ivan "Bill Blanton" <bblanton@REMOVEmagicnet.net> wrote in message news:uVSun7TJEHA.3292@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl... The FSInfo sector , usually located in the sector following the boot sector, contains two pieces of information. The "FreeClusterCount" and the "NextAvailableCluster". The error is due to the fact that the actual amount of free clusters counted by scandisk does not match this recorded amount. Possibilities include any Windows file operation, where the file system may have created/deleted/resized a file, but for some reason did not update the count. (i.e. lockup, bad shutdown, incomplete write). Another thing that can corrupt the count, though probably very rare, is any program that does not use the DOS or Windows file services, but instead writes files to the disk directly but does not update the count. It is a very common and usually a trivial error, unless the count is so low that you experience failed writes due to "insufficient space". You could record the size of your drives before and after each scandisk to get the exact amount it differs. "Ivan B?tora" <xxx@xxx.xx> wrote in message news:uc5p4DTJEHA.208@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl... Occasionally when I run Scandisk, I get a message about important information in the boot area of the give drive that might be damaged. This does happen on a regular basis, but I cannot directly trace it to forced resets due to blue screens or illegal operations. Sometimes the free space on my E: partition, which is around 13 GB, appears to go down to 1 GB or so. Running scandisk fixes that issue. Here is a copy of the log from the most recent scan: ------------------- ******************* Microsoft ScanDisk for Windows NOTE: If you use an MS-DOS program to view this file, some of the characters may appear incorrectly. Use a Windows program such as Notepad instead. Log file generated at 06:25 on 18.4.2004. ScanDisk used the following options: Standard test Drive DATA (E:) contained the following errors: The drive contained an error in its FSInfoSector. Resolution: Repair the error Results: Error was corrected as specified above. ScanDisk found errors on this drive and fixed them all. ------------------- My questions: 1) What exactly is the "FSInfoSector"? 2) What kind of errors are these and what could be causing them? Thanks for your input on the issue. Ivan On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 11:55:15 -0400, "Bill Blanton" (on FAT32 Free Space Info errors) >It would be very difficult. You would have to constantly monitor the cluster >count record, the "actual" count, while at the same time monitor what >processes are writing to the disk. These errors go hand-in-hand with bad exits (shutdown failures), so if you have those, you will have this error too. Often it's the only error; sometimes it's with other errors such as lost cluster chains and incorrct file lengths. Perhaps Scandisk generates it when correcting other errors, e.g. truncating mismatched lengths? If you shutdowhn properly but still see automatic Scandisk on startup with this as a common error, then you may need to delay your shutdown period between end of shutdown and ATX off. Once the OS sends stuff to HD, everything's done as far as its concerned, and it tells ATX to power off. Some HDs don't flush their own cache to platters fast enough to finish doing this before the ATX cuts power, and in such cases, data is as lost as if you hadn't shut down properly, hence the auto-Scandisk and FSInfo errors. There's a patch for that, but it may be as simple as a .REG ? >-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - - Running Windows-based av to kill active malware is like striking a match to see if what you are standing in is water or petrol. >-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - - |
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