How To fix "Scan Disk"

[shankle]

On an old Dell Optiplex gx1 I am running 2 partitions with Windows 98.
The 2nd partition scans the disk and defrags fine.
The 1st partition runs the "Scan Disk" and hangs. I have to power down the machine to end it.
Is there any way with the CD of Windows 98 to pull off the scan disk and load it to the
correct folder????? The other solution is more than I can bare.
Thanks for any help..
JPS

[MichaelW]

I don't currently have a Windows 98 system to test, but the CD includes the DOS app scandisk.exe and the Windows app scandskw.exe. They are in Win98_42.cab on the Windows 98 FE CD, and Win98_46.cab on the Windows 98 SE CD. The Windows app is only 4896 bytes so I'm not sure if it uses the DOS app or if it depends on some other file. You can extract them with the extract.exe in the Win98 directory, or just use something like WinZip.

[shankle]

I took scandisk.exe and scandskw.exe from the working partition of  windows 98 and
put them in the proper folders on the partition that is failing. As expected SCANDISK still
hangs with no error messages. I think I have reached an impass.

[P1]

Remove the hard drive from the system and mount in Another system.  And run the scandisk from that system natively.

I use my XP to 'fix' my other Window's system hard drives on a regular basis.

Regards,  P1  :8)

[shankle]

The old Dell optiplex gx1 has one kind of wiring for the hard drive.
The other newer Dell optiplex gx280 has a completely different wiring scheme.
When the old dell goes belly up i'll have to junk the slave 120g hard drive because
the wiring is not compatible with the newer machine.

[P1]

Just plug the Old drive into the connector going to the CD drive.  And it will work Ok.  Unless it's SCSI.  But the GX280 has the IDE for hard drive still.  Cable may look different, but it works the same.

Regards,  P1  :8)

[MichaelW]

The gx1 has an EIDE (40-pin) drive interface. The gx280 has one or two SATA controllers supporting one device each and one parallel Ultra ATA/100 IDE supporting two devices per channel with one channel. Barring a BIOS problem with the gx280, I think it should be able to handle the EIDE drive on the parallel IDE interface, assuming the master/slave configuration does not conflict with the other drive on the channel.

As an alternative, you could obtain a test app from the drive manufacturer and run it from a boot diskette.

[P1]

... assuming the master/slave configuration does not conflict with the other drive on the channel.

That is why I said to use the CD Drive connector.  When you unplug the CD, usually it will be the only device on the ribbon cable and this will work. 

I will note:  I have had trouble with certain drives where the Dell BIOS made me use the drive 0 position on the cable ( as the only drive ) with the drive jumpered as Master ( Cable Select did not work. ).

Regards,  P1  :8)