scandisk

[santool]

I am using Win98. I recently upgraded my computer from a 6gb hard drive to a 27gb. I also increased the memory from 64mb to 128. Everything works fine except scandisk and disk defragmentor. When I try to run scandisk using the "thorough" option the computer freezes before it scans the entire disk. The same when I try to defragment. Any ideas?

[justbarron]

First of all, do you have alot of programs running in the background? Hit Cont/Alt/Del and see what all is running. Shut down everything except for Explorer and systray and try running them, or boot into safe mode and run it from there.

Justbarron

[Cricket]

Hi santool,

Do as justbarron suggests and you should be able to get Scandisk and Defrag to complete.

To get to Windows Safe Mode, start your PC and watch for the "Verifying DMI Pool Data..." message and hit the Ctrl key. That will bring up the Boot Menu, use the arrow keys and select "Windows Safe Mode". Once in Safe Mode, just start Scandisk and Defrag as you normally would.

Another thing you might want to do is get the Windows ME version of Defrag...it's an improved (faster) version than the Win98 version. You can download it from here: http://www.homestead.com/Scotterpops/Files/downloads/winme_defrag.zip

or from here:
http://www.boogiejack.com/computer018.htmlversion

:) Cricket

[GaryRouth]

Hi Santool

Hopefully Cricket and justbarrons' posts got you going again.

But just in case you are still locking up, It couldn't hurt to
make sure your Ultra-DMA settings are OK. If your old drive was
an Ultra-33 and used a 40pin cable, and your new drive is an Ultra-
66 or Ultra-100 (or even a Maxtor Ultra-133), you'll need the 80wire
cable for that. And you'll need to check if your BIOS and chipset
support DMA transfers over 33 MB-per-second (the theoretical rate
of Ultra-33). If you end up needing to run your new drive at the
33 rate, (due to motherboard/bios lack of support), you may need to
run a utility (which you can download from your drive's manufacturer)
to set the transfer rate of your new drive back down to Ultra-33.

Your motherboard manual, or motherboard manufacturer's website, should
list all the information you need about the board's IDE capablilities.

And there are add-in cards, sometimes available for free at the store
where you purchased your new drive, that can provide Ultra-66 and up
support (controller cards).

But hopefully you won't need any of this info....
...Gary