Drive Label, Folders and Files changed to DOS format

[sfd]

Gentlemen, Suggestions please.

My Primary Slave has inexplicably decided to change it's label to DOS 8 character format as have 5 of the 12 folders on this drive and the files they contain. (Of the 7 unaffected folders 6 would qualify for the truncated names but are unchanged).

All files/progs seem intact except for a small MP3 player, Coolplayer, that has vanished although renamed folder remains.

A couple of days ago I lost a 256k stick of Ram which may be relevant.

Drive is a WD 120Gb JB <12 months old, divided into 3 logical drives. Other two drive letters unaffected.
Western Digital's own diagnostic tool finds no errors.

May have compounded my problem as I ran Scandisk and the offending folders are now named Dir00000... etc.,

Have experimented with giving it it's own IDE as well as thru Promise controller card. Drive correctly identified in BIOS. No change in how names reported by windows.

It appears Windows has arbitrarily renamed things with the interesting creation date of 1634 (system clock ok).

Scanreg has failed to start/restore any backups.

Is the drive on way out and, is there any way I can automatically revert to normal file names?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks.


System: Win98SE/Mandrake Linux 9.0, 1.4 Athlon, Iwill KA266-R, 256k ram, 1 X 46Gb IBM deathstar & 2 X 120Gb WD JBs, Plextor burner, Promise controller card.

[TwoRails]

Hi sfd,

Welcome to PC Mechanic !!

Something is scrambled. The drive could be going bad. Could have a virus.

I would do a complete virus scan, then a diskscan including a surface scan (followed by a defrag if possible) and see what they come up with.

TwoRails

[GaryRouth]

Seems like I remember (but not well) that older versions of ScanDisk run on systems using the newer long filenames can cause this to happen by damaging a file that contains the links to tie the DOS eight character names to their Windows longname counterparts. I'll be at work later on (after some shut-eye) & I should be able to take a look around & see if we have a repair for that.

. . . Gary

[my other guesses would be along with Rails - antivirus scan & such. I also wonder if the affected drive letter & folders happen after the first 62gb of the drive, while the unaffected drive letters and folders are in the first 62gb ? . . .just a guess, since some disk utilities had to be updated for the newer gigantic drives]

[sfd]

Thanks for welcome & replies.

Virus free. Scan fixed some errors & resulted in folder name change mentioned above.

Defragged (DiskKeepr Lite) no fragmented files (only 43% full).

Windows still presenting DOS file names. Very frustrating as all short cuts & progs useless as they have a tilde & number in their names. Bizarre thing is that within affected folders some long files names remain unscathed.

[Jomama]

What is on this Primary Slave? Is it a clone or image of your primary Master? How do you have the drives connected. Did you make the wrong one active?

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

Well, it took me a while, but here's the link to a MS utility that attempts to restore long filenames if they are damaged or corrupt: http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;301316

If that doesn't work, post your results & we'll try something else.
. . . Gary

[sfd]

Jomama - drive not cloned. until earlier post it had happily shared a cable with other drive on IDE0. It is now on it's own cable on IDE1.

GaryRouth, good find but no joy (nothing to restore from).

Problem persists & I'm at a loss as to how file names could physically be changed. Discovered another .exe file missing (small screen cap utility). Am about to start trying to change names manually.

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

Were you able to run the sulfnbk.exe program, but it couldn't find a file to restore? (did it give you an error message such as "unable to find file winlfn.ini"?) Or were you unable to extract the program? (or do you not have access to a Win98 or Win98se installation disk?)

If you don't have an installation disk to extract sulfnbk.exe from, you can check for it in the cabs if you put them in C:\Windows\Options\Cabs [system file checker will search the cabs and extract it for you if you checkmark the option "restore one file..."] Or any Win98 disk will do for just the one file. (not sure if MS has it on the download site)

I've never had any filename adventures, so although I've heard of this program, I've never used it. I'm not sure if it needs anything on the host system (like an .ini file), or whether it is able to scan and rebuild all on its own. Wish I did know.

The long filenames for drives, folders, and files can be changed to the DOS 8.3 format if they are manipulated by a file management program that doesn't support the long filenames. A rare example of this would be if you used the older File Manager (winfile.exe) to move or copy files in Win98. The winfile.exe is an older 16bit program kept for backward compatibility reasons. I noticed you have a Linux partition on the same system: might you have moved a few things around from Linux (with a file manager not longname compliant)?

To answer your question of how the filenames could be physically changed, I think what actually happens is that Windows makes two versions of each file that qualifies for a long filename - the long filename version, and the 8.3 DOS version. And for whatever reason, Windows now can't find the long filename. Here's the article that shows the process Windows uses to generate the long filenames http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;142982

I'm still thinking that some files may have been corrupted when the 256mb stick went bad.

[I suppose you could try an "over-the-top" reinstall, or a "verify files" reinstall (not really a reinstall after all), but you'd probably have to fix either LiLo or Grub to get your Linux boot menu back. The "over-the-top" reinstall is done by renaming the file win.com to something like win.old or win.bak. That file is in the C\Windows directory. You have to rename it in DOS. From the A: prompt, you'd switch to C and

cd \Windows
rename win.com win.bak

And then run setup from the installation disk, or cab files. To run the "verify files only" setup, simply start setup by booting with a win98 startup disk with CD support, put the installation disk in the drive, change to the CD drive letter, change to the \Win98 directory, and then

setup /p f

There must be a space between the p and the f. For either of these reinstalls, you'll need your CD key when prompted - If you don't have it handy, before you start the reinstall try a program such as SiSoft Sandra (http://www.sisoftware.co.uk) or BelArc Advisor to find it for you. It's also listed in your Registry under HKEY_Local_Machine/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion. If you click on that folder "Current Version", you'll see a list of registry keys and their values displayed to the right. Your CD key is stored under the key "ProductKey" (simple enough, huh). For Win98, it should be 5 sets of 5 alphanumeric characters with a dash separating each set. You'd use regedit to view this in the Registry (or course, be careful in there - but you sound like an experienced user)

The undocumented Win98 reinstall method that just refreshes the system files is an old tip posted here on Pc Mechanic a while back. (Probably glc or reboot, but I can't remember).

Hope it turns out
. . . Gary

[sfd]

Whew, what a whopper!

Sulfnbk was already on system, so I replaced with SFC.

Although as I was unable to find any parameters or switches so went for variatons of "restore". Error was:"Can't find backup file" will digest the rest of your post & report back.

Thanks for effort.

[GaryRouth]

Sorry about the long posts - once I start typing, off I go . . . [lucky you don't have to listen to me talk talk talk talk talk ...]

I'm hoping that maybe it can generate links on its own, and not just rely on a backup file. If it absolutely has to have a particular file, see if it tells you the name of that file - maybe it's an a backup CD you've burned?