downgrading from XP to W98 surface scan issue

the Guru

Ok before I start Im downgrading to 98 as my old laptop will run much faster on 98 XP slows it right down (64mb of ram)

OK got so far with this downgrade but im having issues with the surface scan

"Some data is stored in a damaged area of drive C, and might already be lost, This problem is probably causing data errors. To see which files are effected by the damage, choose More Info."

Choose fix it to have scandisk move the affected data to an undamaged area of drive C. Scandisk will then mark the damaged area to prevent it from being used to store data in the future"

fair enough see surface scan 2.jpg

The issue is the scandisk is only fixing 1 cluster at a time so at this time im at 2526 clusters fixed (pressing the space bar this much is really fooking me off)

Is there a quicker / easier way to fix this problem.

Any help will be much appriciated

Cheers Declan

DonkeyStyle \o/

Try booting off the 98 CD and running scandisk with the /autofix switch (ie: scandisk /autofix at the command prompt while you're in the folder that contains the exe), shouldn't prompt you then. (or if that doesn't work, try running it with the /? switch, which should tell you what the option is to auto repair clusters)
I can't remember if you can run scandisk manually off the CD, but check the win98 folder on the CD drive, and check the ramdrive (A:\ or B:\) the CD sets up, as it's probably on that.

Although the last time I used the 98CD for something like this, it was missing some essential tool I needed, something like attrib or sys... I couldn't believe it wasn't there

Did you reformat this drive before the '98 install btw?

the Guru

AFAIK the disk was reformated, I have tried running manually of the CD and it took me to this hellish place

DonkeyStyle \o/

The who in the what now?
Did you boot to the command prompt with the CD?
Like when you choose the 'Start with CD ROM support' option (ie. not 'setup')
You should get to C:\> _ or similar.
I'm not 100% clear on where you're at with this.

the Guru

yes i booted from the command prompt

Capt'n Midnight

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

Try booting off the 98 CD and running scandisk with the /autofix switch (ie: scandisk /autofix at the command prompt

Boot up from the 98 CD and into a command pompt only

scandisk /all /surface /autofix

if the drive is making funny noises then not good

if you have already formatted then take a step backwards - use FDISK to delete all partitions on the disk and reboot and fdisk to make a partition and then fromat it and then install

the Guru

I have restarted the laptop now and it will only go to a cmd prompt
i have tried to install 98 now from the cmd prompt but it wont change to the correct drive (d:) for the installation

DonkeyStyle \o/

Yeah you won't have CDROM support in DOS unless you load something like mscdex, I don't remeber which one the '98 cd uses, but if you're booting off the CD properly, then you should have the option to boot to a command prompt with CD support enabled... from there you should be able to access the drive, as well as the ramdrive (A: or B:) which has a lot of DOS utils on it.