Scandisk/Defrag Reinstall problem

[moke]

A friend cannot run Scandisk nor Defrag on his computer. It results in a fault and neither the Scandisk or Defrag screen ever comes up. I don't have the fault description to post but here are some of the things that we have encountered.

1. Windows cannot be exited to the Dos prompt nor restarted in Dos mode.

2. You cannot boot to the Dos prompt - it comes up with a flashing "_" after it and after a few moments Win98 loads.

3. Replacing the Scandisk & Defrag files did not help.

4. Regular attempts to re-install W98 failed but an install is currently under way using the /is switch to bypass Scandisk on install.
As install began it came up with the use Safe Recovery no doubt due to the earlier failed install attempt. If this fixes the problem I will post back to say so but I would like to know what went wrong to start with regardless.

> Do any gurus have any thoughts/input on this problem?

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[J A L]

Hi,
My first thought is he may have a virus! Second make a boot disk on a clean computer by going to a dos prompt and typing in "format a: /s" without quotes. This will make you what I call a systems disk. Put that disk in your problem computer and run scandisk and then run defrag. Then boot to windows and run a virus scan on your system!

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GO MARINERS!!

[moke]

J A L - Nats I forgot to list that as something we already tried if fact it was the first thing we tried.

The re-install fixed the problem and it may well be one of those where there is no way to really find out what went wrong.

Thanks for your input and if anyone has any idea what the problem was I'd sure like to know.

------------------
A Little Brain Damage Can't Hurt!

My help page...

http://rvi.net/~moke/MokeHlp/MAIN.htm