Windows 2000 defragmentation

Koeppster

Senior member
Jul 6, 2001
331
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Please bear in mind when reading this message, that while I am competent with MS Windows, my expertise is with other non-Microsoft x86 operating systems. :)

OK, between the time I left work last night at around 5:45 and got to work this morning at 8:30, nearly 90% of the software I installed on my work machine disappeared.

It's a Dell box with a 33GB SCSI HD, of which approx. 6.5GB were being used. I locked the screen last night before leaving. Only the cleaning trolls would have been in the office. When I unlocked the machine and started to work, I noticed that some of my shortcuts were not locating the executables. I opened up the folder where I install software (C:\apps, NOT "Program Files", which I abhor), and nearly everything was gone. I updated my virus defs, ran a full scan, and came up with nothing. I ran the Disk Defragmenter, which made it look like I sorely needed to do it, so I did. Still nothing appeared. I installed the Recovery Console off the Windows CD and ran chkdsk /r from that. Still nothing.

The weird things:1) the amount of free space being reported from yesterday to today has not changed. 2) No other files on my hard drive are missing or moved. Only things in the C:\apps tree.

Does anyone have any other ideas? I will probably go ahead and reinstall things....I've lost the whole morning to this, since the old version of Arcview 3.2 was among the things that vanished. Rather frustrating, believe me. And no, I'm not going to out-and-out blame Windows for this, although it makes me resent that fact that I'm forced to use it at work even more than I already do.

 

StuckMojo

Golden Member
Oct 28, 1999
1,069
1
76
sounds like you might have a flaky disk.
have you run scandisk? you can get to it in win2k right where you get to defrag. right click on the drive and choose properties | tools | error checking

even if it finds nothing...you should strongly consider a complete format....

[edit] or at least not trust any non-expendable data to that drive [/edit]
 

ineedsleep

Senior member
Aug 24, 2001
256
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do a search on your computer for a known program executable... such as MS Word you'd search for word.exe

If it can't find it, there's one of two possibilities that could have happened...

1. Your HD sucks... as StuckMojo said... -or-
2. Your comp got broken in to by somebody who thought it funny to delete things...

I'd say your HD sucks, run scandisk as recommended, then if it finds nothing, do a format. Talk to your admins at work and tell them your HD isn't working to well and explain your problem. They may give you a new one ( I would... Can't have people's work disappearing on them, waste of time).

Oh yeah, I'd suggest doing a surface scan just to check it. This could take a while so maybe something you can do before you leave work.
 

Koeppster

Senior member
Jul 6, 2001
331
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I forgot to mention that I tried searching for known binaries on the disk. Nowhere to be found.

There is zero possibility of anyone else tampering with the machine. This is a small office with only 3 people, and apparently the cleaning people were not here last night.

I set the error check to occur when I boot up next time, we'll see what happens. All tools and diagnostics report no problems with the disk. Luckily, all my data is on the network, not on this machine.

God, I really hate Winders. :)