beckman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Peter Beckman) (09/23/89)
When I run chkdsk on my C:, DOS 3.30, I get the question shown above. It started happening recently. What has changed? Should I worry? -Pete
nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (09/23/89)
In article <26474@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> beckman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Peter Beckman) writes:
When I run chkdsk on my C:, DOS 3.30, I get the question shown above.
It started happening recently. What has changed?
The first word of your FAT is no longer recognizable by DOS.
Should I worry?
Probably. Quite possibly your FAT is trashed, and so some of your files
are lost.
-russ
--
--russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu])
Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee.bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) (09/24/89)
-<26474@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> beckman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Peter Beckman) : - - When I run chkdsk on my C:, DOS 3.30, I get the question shown above. - It started happening recently. What has changed? This happened to me recently, although all the data was fine. Various people pointed me to the first byte of the FAT, which contains an ID value. It turns out that the ID byte had gotten scrambled somehow; this mattered to chkdsk, but not to most programs. If that's the problem, you can use a sector editor to patch things back up. A fixed disk should have a value of 0xF8; different floppies have different ID values.
BL.JPL@forsythe.stanford.edu (Jonathan Lavigne) (09/25/89)
In article <26495@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>, bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) writes: >-<26474@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> beckman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Peter Beckman) : >- >- When I run chkdsk on my C:, DOS 3.30, I get the question shown above. >- It started happening recently. What has changed? > >This happened to me recently, although all the data was fine. Various >people pointed me to the first byte of the FAT, which contains an ID >value. It turns out that the ID byte had gotten scrambled somehow; this >mattered to chkdsk, but not to most programs. > >If that's the problem, you can use a sector editor to patch things back >up. A fixed disk should have a value of 0xF8; different floppies have >different ID values. I too just had this problem. An epidemic? I was told that the proper value for the first two bytes of the FAT is "F8 FF", and that there are two copies of the FAT that need to be changed. When I looked at the two copies using PC-Tools, both read "F7 FF", so I guess that's where the problem lay. My difficulties were complicated by the fact that DOS refused to set the proper FILES value from my CONFIG.SYS file when I booted using my hard disk. Reformatting the disk cleared up both problems. Jonathan Lavigne BL.JPL@RLG.STANFORD.EDU Research Libraries Group Stanford University
tim@j.cc.purdue.edu (Timothy Lange) (09/25/89)
If that is the only error message from CHKDSK then the boot sector has some incorrect information in it. I have a machine that did that for a year. I finally took the time to do two full backups and did a low level format to clear up the error. Just repartitioning the drive should fix it, but I wanted an intensive test done since I had to reload the disk anyway. Tim. -- Tim Lange. Purdue U. Computing Center/MATH Bldg./W. Lafayette, IN 47907/317-494-1787 Arpanet & Bitnet=tim@j.cc.purdue.edu CIS=75410,525