ScanDisk from Dos vs. ScanDisk from Windows

[Smitty]

Motivated by a question on another forum, which has had endless responses, I tried a remedy that I was going to suggest. The "problem" was ScanDisk doesn't complete and of course user gets error messages every time he boots. He related trouble getting to boot in Safe mode.

I thought it would be simple to boot with EBD, choose minimal boot, access C:\Windows\Command and run ScanDisk from there. Before I responded to his post I did just that. ScanDisk window came up, executed and reported "error in freespace allocated" or something like that. I was puzzled but went ahaead and allowed Scandisk to carry out repair. I removed the floppy, exited ScanDisk and restarted. Everything was fine. Out of curiosity I ran Scandisk from System Tools menu and again received the same message I had just "fixed". I allowed repair.

I repeated the entire process again but this time ScanDisk form Dos reported no errors.

My questions then, are there (2) versions of ScanDisk?
Could the normal boot after running ScanDisk in DOS have created a disk error?
Can I recommend this fix to others who cannot boot to Safe mode and cannot get ScanDisk to complete from Windows?

As I said, I am not experiencing any errors but am puzzled.

Thanks for any enlightenment.

Smitty

[RWSchlatter]

"...My questions then, are there (2) versions of ScanDisk? ..."
yes, a realmode dos versiona and a Windows version with slightly different functionality.

"...Could the normal boot after running ScanDisk in DOS have created a disk error? ..."
Probably not the boot (execpt if you powered off or lost power during that phase, but the previous execution of Windows is more likely.

"...Can I recommend this fix to others who cannot boot to Safe mode and cannot get ScanDisk to complete from Windows? ..."
J think this should be safe, let them boot to dos mode from the disk first (not possible with WinMe) and then let them boot from the Emergency Boot Disk (EBD) - hoping they have created on in advance.

More in the "Resource Kit for Win98" documentation:
<a target="_blank" href=http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/prodtechnol/win98/reskit/part5/wrkc27.asp>http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/prodtechnol/win98/reskit/part5/wrkc27.asp</a>

(you will need to read thru the whole article to get all pieces together, possibly use the IE Find command with "scandisk" to locate relevant information).



______________
Regards - Richard

[Smitty]

Thanks for the link Richard.



Smitty