Windows XP tools?

[grstaka]

If you would like to run scan disk on XP, generally all you
have to do is turn off the PC manually and the next time it
starts it will run on its own. Otherwise:

In windows: Right click the drive in question from My
Computer > selecet properties > under the tools tab choose
scan disk

If you can not start windows its a little more trickier to
do.

If you have a MS-dos strt up disk pre-made you can just
insert it. Type: <Cd c > (no arrows) and then type <CHKDSK>
(no arrows once again). Your File checker is also a part of
CHKDSK now. Use the /? switch (aka: type CHKDSK /?)to get a
complete list of commands. Also you may simply type <HELP>
at the command prompt for a list of commands. If you are
unsure what a command does use the < /? > as I did above
with the CHKDSK command to find out what a command does
before you use it. I highly recommend not using these
utilities unless you know what they do and are positive
that you need to use it.

If you don't have a boot Disk you can use F8 to enter safe
mode then proceed to a command prompt.

If safe mode isn't accesable use the Installation CD to
boot then Select "Repair" When the You are prompted to
choose how to proceed. Once you enter the DOS enviroment
you may use all of the utilities I have listed above to
diagnose, troubleshoot and solve your problem.
>-----Original Message-----
>I just had to do a hard shut down of my brand new Dell
because the system
>stopped responding to everything! I was doing nothing that
I do not
>ordinarily do every day so I have no clue what it choked
on.
>
>However, I am at a loss as to how to check the hard drive
after starting the
>thing up again!! With Windows 98 I had System File Checker
and Scandisk. On
>this Windows XP Pro (?) there are NO SUCH TOOLS AVAILABLE
that I can see!!!
>How does Microsoft expect me to check my system?
>
>Thank you,
>
>--
>DWK
>Simi Valley
>CA
>USA
>
>
>.
>

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

Very poor advice! That can cause disk corruption and permanent loss of
information.

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)

"grstaka" > wrote in message
...
> If you would like to run scan disk on XP, generally all you
> have to do is turn off the PC manually and the next time it
> starts it will run on its own. Otherwise:
>
> In windows: Right click the drive in question from My
> Computer > selecet properties > under the tools tab choose
> scan disk
>
> If you can not start windows its a little more trickier to
> do.
>
> If you have a MS-dos strt up disk pre-made you can just
> insert it. Type: <Cd c > (no arrows) and then type <CHKDSK>
> (no arrows once again). Your File checker is also a part of
> CHKDSK now. Use the /? switch (aka: type CHKDSK /?)to get a
> complete list of commands. Also you may simply type <HELP>
> at the command prompt for a list of commands. If you are
> unsure what a command does use the < /? > as I did above
> with the CHKDSK command to find out what a command does
> before you use it. I highly recommend not using these
> utilities unless you know what they do and are positive
> that you need to use it.
>
> If you don't have a boot Disk you can use F8 to enter safe
> mode then proceed to a command prompt.
>
> If safe mode isn't accesable use the Installation CD to
> boot then Select "Repair" When the You are prompted to
> choose how to proceed. Once you enter the DOS enviroment
> you may use all of the utilities I have listed above to
> diagnose, troubleshoot and solve your problem.
> >-----Original Message-----
> >I just had to do a hard shut down of my brand new Dell
> because the system
> >stopped responding to everything! I was doing nothing that
> I do not
> >ordinarily do every day so I have no clue what it choked
> on.
> >
> >However, I am at a loss as to how to check the hard drive
> after starting the
> >thing up again!! With Windows 98 I had System File Checker
> and Scandisk. On
> >this Windows XP Pro (?) there are NO SUCH TOOLS AVAILABLE
> that I can see!!!
> >How does Microsoft expect me to check my system?
> >
> >Thank you,
> >
> >--
> >DWK
> >Simi Valley
> >CA
> >USA
> >
> >
> >.
> >

[*Vanguard*]

grstaka said in :
> If you would like to run scan disk on XP, generally all you
> have to do is turn off the PC manually and the next time it
> starts it will run on its own. Otherwise: ...

I've rarely had chkdsk (*not* scandisk which is NOT available with
Windows NT/2000/XP) run on a slammed shutdown (i.e., switching off the
power without shutting down the OS). But then I use NTFS which includes
journaling to take care of of file corruption on startup (for files that
were open when you or a power outage slammed it off).

If you want to run chkdsk, just do so. If it is ran on a partition
other than where are the Windows system files, it will run right away
and even inside of Windows. If you attempt to run chkdsk on the Windows
partition or any that cannot be unlocked, it will tell you so. Just
answer yes to have it run at startup (i.e., after a reboot).

The slamming of the host by dropping power without first stopping the OS
was an old Windows 9x/ME trick that left a "dirty bit" set (it gets
cleared on a normal shutdown but won't get cleared if the power is
dropped and how Windows knows on its next load to run scandisk).

[Mark]

"*Vanguard*" > wrote in message >...
> But then I use NTFS which includes
> journaling to take care of of file corruption on startup (for files that
> were open when you or a power outage slammed it off).

In what sense does NTFS 'take care of file corruption'? My XP machine
rarely gets restarted unexpectedly, yet I've had it delete
multi-gigabyte files, put old contents back into other files, and
corrupt yet more files when that happens. In my experience, FAT32 is
vastly more reliable than NTFS when an unexpected reboot happens... I
can never trust that any file I write to NTFS will still be there
after the next reboot.

I believe that all NTFS guarantees is metadata consistency: which may
sound good until you realise that you can guarantee metadata
consistency by just formatting the hard drive every time the machine
boots. Deleting multigigabyte files and corrupting other files in
order to avoid running scandisk seems like a poor tradeoff to me.

Mark

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

If you are experiencing spurious "file corruption" problems, update your M/B
drivers - especially if you are using an Asus A7N8X motherboard. The Windows
drivers and older/original Asus drivers were known for causing this problem!

I am certain that some other brand M/B's have similar problems.

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)

"Mark" > wrote in message
m...
> "*Vanguard*"
> wrote in
message >...
> > But then I use NTFS which includes
> > journaling to take care of of file corruption on startup (for files that
> > were open when you or a power outage slammed it off).
>
> In what sense does NTFS 'take care of file corruption'? My XP machine
> rarely gets restarted unexpectedly, yet I've had it delete
> multi-gigabyte files, put old contents back into other files, and
> corrupt yet more files when that happens. In my experience, FAT32 is
> vastly more reliable than NTFS when an unexpected reboot happens... I
> can never trust that any file I write to NTFS will still be there
> after the next reboot.
>
> I believe that all NTFS guarantees is metadata consistency: which may
> sound good until you realise that you can guarantee metadata
> consistency by just formatting the hard drive every time the machine
> boots. Deleting multigigabyte files and corrupting other files in
> order to avoid running scandisk seems like a poor tradeoff to me.
>
> Mark

[Mark]

"Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)" > wrote in message >...
> If you are experiencing spurious "file corruption" problems, update your M/B
> drivers - especially if you are using an Asus A7N8X motherboard. The Windows
> drivers and older/original Asus drivers were known for causing this problem!

Well, there's no corruption except when Windows gets a hard reboot.
It's an Intel 845 chipset, but I'll check the Intel website tonight
and see if there are any newer drivers up there.

Mark

[*Vanguard*]

Mark said in m:
> "*Vanguard*"
> > wrote
> in message >...
>> But then I use NTFS which includes
>> journaling to take care of of file corruption on startup (for files
>> that were open when you or a power outage slammed it off).
>
> In what sense does NTFS 'take care of file corruption'? My XP machine
> rarely gets restarted unexpectedly, yet I've had it delete
> multi-gigabyte files, put old contents back into other files, and
> corrupt yet more files when that happens. In my experience, FAT32 is
> vastly more reliable than NTFS when an unexpected reboot happens... I
> can never trust that any file I write to NTFS will still be there
> after the next reboot.
>
> I believe that all NTFS guarantees is metadata consistency: which may
> sound good until you realise that you can guarantee metadata
> consistency by just formatting the hard drive every time the machine
> boots. Deleting multigigabyte files and corrupting other files in
> order to avoid running scandisk seems like a poor tradeoff to me.
>
> Mark

Take a read at http://www.ntfs.com/data-integrity.htm. What I called
journaling is referred to as transaction logging. I, too, have lost
some [data] files after a blue screen death but the volume was still
defined correctly and I was able to boot back into Windows 2000/XP
(whereas a hard crash within Windows 9x/ME can leave the partition
unbootable).

The article does mention, "If either the master boot record (MBR) or
boot sector is corrupted, you might not be able to access data on the
volume." Well, that is because those areas are outside the realm of
control of the operating system on a boot (but can be corrupted by
program ran under it). Boot using the Windows 2000/XP install CD and
use the first Repair option to load the Recovery Console (onto a
ramdisk) and run FIXMBR to fix the first problem. My guess is that you
use the second Repair option to fix the boot sector (along with repair
of the installation of Windows).

You might also want to go into Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) to disable
the write caching on your hard drive. If the option isn't available or
disabled for the disk drive in Device Manager, check if you can set it
under the IDE controller device in Device Manager.

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=332023
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=281672
http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=XpScsiProblems

If you are using, say, nVidia's IDE driver for a mobo that uses their
nForce chipset then maybe you should revert back to the generic
Microsoft IDE busmaster drivers. If you have the drives attached to an
IDE controller card, check for later drivers. However, I have seen the
latest driver not be the best driver, like with Promise in which I
encountered where a version actually caused corruption, talked with
them, and found out they knew about the problem, yanked it from their
web site (but it was slow going getting it removed from Windows Update),
and I had to either revert to an older driver or use one for a different
model IDE card.

Enabling caching on the hard drive will always incur the possibility of
file [system] corruption. If you enable disk caching, you should use a
UPS. "Delayed writes, an old disk-cache trick, are a luxury that should
be trumped by reliability."
(http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,1761,a=114689,00.asp). You could
disable delayed-writes disk caching and endure the slowdown for improved
reliability or you enable it, use a UPS, and don't install untested
applications on your production host (i.e., you test them on a
non-production or non-critical host to ensure you don't impact
reliability).

--
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