Please help!! win 98, scandisk problem!

[fabian]

Help please!!!

I'm having troubles with Windoes 98..
Irecentley buyed a pentium4 PC and I wanted to get all of the data from my win98 PC, but when I tried too mount its HD in another PC with USb portals (for data-transfer), it wouldnt start normally..
Scandisk starts to run but it just quits at 85%, saying:
"scandisk is unable to write to disk C" (?!?!?!?!)
then it gives me the option to exit...
but then I get the message : "Scandisk failed to blabla" "Abort, Retry, Fail"

it all comes down to restarting the PC again and again and encountering the same problem over and over again...

What can I do with this scandisk nonsense

[mike breck]

Is the new PC a brand PC like Dell or Compaq - or just a generic PC.

Why are you using USB - is the old drive an external USB HD?

Usually with ATA HDs, all you have to do is Slave the old HD to the HD in the new system using the existing ATA ribbon cable.

Set the jumpers on the old HD from Master to Slave. If the HD in the new system is jumpered to Cable Select, then jumper the old HD to Cable Select too.

Usually the new HD will be set to Cable Select if it is on an 80 wire ATA66/100 cable with blue, gray, and black connectors. However, check and see, as I know some builders will use Master/Slave on these cables as well. Cable Select is considered better.

If the cable is a Standard ATA 40 wire cable, without the coloured connectors, just jumper them as Master and Slave.

So you need to check the jumpers on the new HD to see what they have set it as and set the jumpers on your old HD accordingly.

It might be a good idea to run a full Scandisk on the old HD in the old PC before attempting this - just to make sure there are no problems with it.

I take it you're just trying to transfer data files and not copy across the whole drive - operating system and all?

Can you tell us what brands of HDs are involved?

HTH

[fabian]

thanks for you answer,

Indeed I'm just trying to get data from the old HD (Maxtor)

For this i have to connect a zip to a pc with USB-portals (the other one is really old but i just have to get the data...)

like you said, run scandisk on the old PC, but it just quits running at 85%, and the only possibillity then is that I restart the PC , encountering the same problem over and over again...

So how can resolve this Scandisk-quitting?

[oldsailor]

Have you tried running scandisk out of MSDOS. I don't mean a DOS Window, shell out to pure DOS.

[fabian]

iwhats the best way to run pure DOS if your HD doesnt even work
and how I do I get my files out of DOS

(i dont really work much with DOS)

[GaryRouth]

fabian - I believe mike's suggestion was to run scandisk on the older Maxtor with the Maxtor put back into it's original computer. If you can't complete ScanDisk on it there, download and run the Maxtor disk diagnostic program Powermax, available for free at their website - you could have a physical problem with the drive.

If the drive checks out OK in the old computer, I don't understand why you want to fuss with zip, usb, or whatever - when all you need to do (I'm repeating mike a lot here) is slave it in the new system & pull whatever info you need of it from there.

You don't want to Boot from it - you just want the old files around, right? Windows XP can read FAT32 disks without any problem. If you try to boot from the older Windows 98 disk in your new machine, though, it's going to run the New Hardware Found routine to death, trying to figure out what happened. And if it actually suceeds in making heads or tails of where it's at: it won't "see" the XP disk or files at all (Win98 can't read NTFS volumes without the use of third party software).

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[fabian]

thanks gray, i'm getting a little wiser now...

i didn't know it was possible to put a win98HD in a winXP-system,
i was always taught not to do this, because I wouldn't be able to see the HD on the new system (I tried this once with a Win 98 in a Win2000 system)

But if you say it's possible, I'm going to try it tonight

still, here's the error that scandisk gives (i wrote it down)

"Scandisk encountered a data error while writing to the root directory
This prevents Scandisk from fixing this drive"

when i run scandisk in DOS

i can see what the problem is:

"C:\Windows\Temp\MSOCLIP1\01" with a damaged "." entry

thanks guys

[mike breck]

Start Windows
go to the folder C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
highlight everything in that folder
hold down the Shift key
right-click and select Delete

That should delete everything in the TEMP folder. You don't need any of those files anyway. They're just "temp" files left there by programs.

Then try running Scandisk again.

HTH

[fabian]

can't start windows, that's the problem

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

I'm not sure which system the Maxtor is in now: it's original system, the "other PC with USB portals", or the new XP box?

Regardless of which it's in: try the Powermax diagnostics, just to make sure it hasn't a physical problem. (http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm)

Remember that it doesn't need to be bootable for XP to read it. I recommend that you do NOT boot with it in the XP machine. If you've got anti-virus on the XP, use it to scan that drive before you copy over any files.

If your troubles with ScanDisk are mostly with the Maxtor in the "other PC with USB portals", I imagine it might do just fine back in its original box. If the ScanDisk troubles happen in its original box, that's even more reason to run the diagnostics, and it's likely that system files were altered during it's visit to the "other PC" (especially if you booted from the Maxtor) - but that really shouldn't matter if you just want to copy some files to the XP.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[remember to change the jumpers on your old Maxtor & make sure that the XP box doesn't boot from the old Maxtor. If you're not sure how, post again - (basically, the XP drive should be 1st in the boot order)]

[Maria444]

Hi everybody!

I defragmented the pc for the first time 2-3 weeks ago. I couldn't do that without making a scandisk before - which I did, successfully that time.

Now I need to defragment again, but I cannot make a scandisk. After I see it trying for a few minutes and going nowhere, an indication comes out that "it tried 10 times, but it seems that another program or function is running that I must close first" (this is a translation).

Nothing's running, I'm trying to do the scandisk right after the pc is on. I did a temp clean up already. What now?

Thanks
Maria

[Miz]

Maria, you'll get more help faster if you start your own thread when you have a question.

That said, I'll offer some help.

Even if you're trying to run scandisk right after a restart, there is still something running in the background. If you have any icons in the system tray (the area around the clock) other than the clock, some (or all) of them indicate a program that's running. Usually a right-click on a system tray icon will give you a menu with the option to "shut down" or "exit" the program it represents. Try that with those icons and see if scan disk will complete.

If it still doesn't finish, the best approach is to start your computer in Safe Mode (so NOTHING will load up) and run scandisk there.

Instructions on how to boot into Safe Mode are on this page.

[Maria444]

Too basic? Ignore it?? You're kidding!

I was SAVED!

Thank you Miz very much, I'm not an expert, followed your advice word for word, as a result the defragmentation is done and the pc is working again!

All the best
Maria