Computer crashes . . . but Scandisk doesn't work

[uhlee81]

my computer has been crashing a lot. (this has actually been happening for some time, but it seems to have gotten worse lately, or maybe I am just more irritable now). Anyway I have been trying to use Scandisk to rectify this problem, but scandisk freezes everytime I reach the second of my two harddrives (one drive is a WD 20.5 gig, the other (the one that crashes is a 6.4 gig Seagate i think). Also i have noticed that a lot of the files from my old harddrive no longer work (random mp3's etc.) I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on how to fix up the old harddrive (short of formatting it). Thanx in advance.

 

[GregMal]

Goto the Western Digital and Seagate web sites. Download their
harddrive utilities. The utilities will scan and flag the bad
sectors.........Greg

 

[randypj]

From my W95b days:

1. Have you tried running scandisk from both DOS and Windows? A bad ram stick was my problem when scandisk would complete from DOS but not W95b.

2. Is your old drive an UDMA? I've had problems running UDMA with non-UDMA (only EIDE) drives.

3. I've locked up my system enough times before, that I got PO'd and overinstalled a known clean/good version of explorer.exe, which did the trick. I sort of figured it out when I noticed I had most of the crashes when dragging files.

4. Do the non-working mp3s work if you run them from the other drive?
--Randy

 

[uhlee81]

thanx for the help, here is the info:

i am running windows millenium,but when i get home i will try to use a boot up disk so that i can get to dos and then i will attempt to run scandisk through dos (i hope it isn't a ram problem, its only 64 megs but its ibm ram)
my new harddrive is UDMA my old one I am not sure (when i get home today i will check)
And, I tried copying the files from my old harddrive to my new harddrive and they don't seem to work. (mp3's)

Thanx again for your help

 

[randypj]

I haven't used ME, so my comments are only for W9x. I'm guessing you can run scandisk in DOS on ME, at least by booting to a rescue floppy? Dunno for sure. Let us know what you end up with. I know for sure that UDMA and non-UDMA drives don't play well together on the same ribbon.

With my RAM problem, I had (2) 32. I finally figured out that Win9x scandisk must be hitting a RAM register that running from DOS didn't.

You'll probably want to try GregMal's suggestion first. It would be easier than mucking with everything else, and could eliminate the drive being the problem. My suggestions are mostly tossed out as possibilities if the drive shows good.
--Randy