Best Way to SCAN DISK a Windows 98 system?

[Jackliz]

Howdy, Framily.
One of our neighbors has a hashed up Compaq laptop. It's OS is Windows 98. I attempted to do a thorough scan on the hard drive. However, about 1/3rd of the way through, the Scan would go back and start all over again. I know that there is a way to get around this annoyance but I(having a senior moment) can't remember how to do that. Please help.

P.S. This machine's hard drive is 5 Gigs. And someone partitioned it into 2 drives. Not sure that I understand that.

Thanks,
Liz

 

[Ned]

You have to boot the machine to a command prompt and not let Windows start.  This is done by pressing F8 while the machine is booting to get to the boot time options menu.  Then you can do the scandisk.  Be sure to scan both partitions (probably C: and D.

 

[Jackliz]

You have to boot the machine to a command prompt and not let Windows start.  This is done by pressing F8 while the machine is booting to get to the boot time options menu.  Then you can do the scandisk.  Be sure to scan both partitions (probably C: and D.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ned, for the speedy reply!!   

Regards,
Liz

 

[John From Detroit]

There is one, and only one way to do a scan disk in win-98

Boot in safe mode

If you don't know how (There are three ways) Keep tapping F-8 while booting,  Hopefully you will get a boot menu option

Why does it keep resetting... The screen saver will reset scan disk, any disk write operation resets scan disk, Same for defrag

 

[Ned]

Safe mode is not the answer.  As long as Windows is running, processes can write to the disk, and cause the scandisk to restart.  The only way to do a full scandisk is from the command prompt WITHOUT Windows running.

 

[Karl]

Ned is correct. All safe mode does is prevent the starting/loading programs and drivers not required by Windows. A better long-term solution would be to create a DOS bootable floppy with the /S option first, go into the bios and make sure the floppy is the first boot device, then boot from it. All necessary utilities; Fdisk, Format, Chkdsk, etc., will be available on the floppy should you need to do any heavy-duty repairing.

 

[Ned]

A diskette is a good idea but few new computers, especially notebooks, don't have a diskette drive.  The command line option from the boot menu gives access to all the command line utilities without the overhead of the Windows processes and drivers.

If you're going to do an fdisk and format, then you might as well use the recovery CD and save the time.

 

[Karl]

Ned,
I was making a semi-educated guess that a win98 system wasn't exactly new ;D

 

[Ned]

Even some of the older notebooks didn't have a built in floppy drive.  Probably time to retire that machine, or put Linux on it

 

[Karl]

O.k. Ned - then attach your TTY punch tape reader to the serial port