FAT and FAT32 partitions not accessible

[Roberto Balzan]

A friend of mine has a computer with Win2000 installed. Recently she told me
that she could not read the floppies (and memory pen) anymore. Changing
hardware did not help as well.
The PC has a ViaTech chipset, and I noticed that the problem was extended to
all kind of FAT and FAT32 partitions: of the three hard disk paritions, two
were NTFS, and were perfectly accessible, one was FAT32, and trying to read
it gave the error message "the partition is not formatted. Do you want to
format it now?". Same error with floppy and memory pen.
As soon as I converted the hd FAT32 partiton to NTFS, the HD partiton was
perfectly readable. Obviously I cannot convert FAT partition of floppy or
memory pen.

I tried to reinstall the VIAtech chipset driver, but the situation didn't
change.
Excluding viruses and/or trojan (because the PC is very well protected,
anyway I checked and didn't find any malicious program running), I suppose
something like a program that modifies system libraries and/or registry has
been installed. Few hopes that uninstalling almost everything the problem
will disappear.

Does anybody know which is the problem and if there is a remedy without
reinstalling Win2K?

Thanks a lot

Roberto

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

A friend of mine has a computer with Win2000 installed. Recently she told me
that she could not read the floppies (and memory pen) anymore. Changing
hardware did not help as well.
The PC has a ViaTech chipset, and I noticed that the problem was extended to
all kind of FAT and FAT32 partitions: of the three hard disk paritions, two
were NTFS, and were perfectly accessible, one was FAT32, and trying to read
it gave the error message "the partition is not formatted. Do you want to
format it now?". Same error with floppy and memory pen.
As soon as I converted the hd FAT32 partiton to NTFS, the HD partiton was
perfectly readable. Obviously I cannot convert FAT partition of floppy or
memory pen.

I tried to reinstall the VIAtech chipset driver, but the situation didn't
change.
Excluding viruses and/or trojan (because the PC is very well protected,
anyway I checked and didn't find any malicious program running), I suppose
something like a program that modifies system libraries and/or registry has
been installed. Few hopes that uninstalling almost everything the problem
will disappear.

Does anybody know which is the problem and if there is a remedy without
reinstalling Win2K?

Thanks a lot

Roberto

Your first step should be to ascertain whether your FAT partitions
are in fact intact. You can do this most easily by rebooting the
machine with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com. If
Win98 can read the partitions they they are probably OK and
Win2000 is the culprit. If Win98 cannot read them either then
the partitions are damaged.

 

[Roberto Balzan]

Your first step should be to ascertain whether your FAT partitions
are in fact intact. You can do this most easily by rebooting the
machine with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com. If
Win98 can read the partitions they they are probably OK and
Win2000 is the culprit. If Win98 cannot read them either then
the partitions are damaged.

I verified in this and another way and the partitons are ok:

- I changed the Floppy drive with a new one, still not readable any floppy
on that machine (obviously same floppies are readable on other PC also with
Win2k)
- Memory sticks are readable on other machines with Win2k
- The HD Fat32 partition (that I converted to NTFS) was on a removable
drive, and it was readable, as FAT32, on other machines with Win2k.

Anyway I did the experiment you suggest (using a Win98 boot floppy), and
- The machine booted (so the Floppy wasn't faulty)
- HD FAT32 was perfectly readable

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I verified in this and another way and the partitons are ok:

- I changed the Floppy drive with a new one, still not readable any floppy
on that machine (obviously same floppies are readable on other PC also with
Win2k)
- Memory sticks are readable on other machines with Win2k
- The HD Fat32 partition (that I converted to NTFS) was on a removable
drive, and it was readable, as FAT32, on other machines with Win2k.

Anyway I did the experiment you suggest (using a Win98 boot floppy), and
- The machine booted (so the Floppy wasn't faulty)
- HD FAT32 was perfectly readable

I've never come across something like this, hence my suggestions
are pure guesswork.
- Does the problem occur while in Safe Mode? If not then it is
caused by a driver or service that is active in normal mode only.
- Have you tried running SFC.exe (System File Checker)?
- Is the file %SystemRoot%\system32\fastfat.sys the same as on healthy
machines?

 

[Roberto Balzan]

Hi Pegasus!
My friend told me that you are a genius (I agree of course )

After your last post I immediately verified the correctness of file
fastfat.sys (that by the way is in the %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\ dir)
and, guess what? The file was missing! AHAH.
That one and some others (curious enough).
Once the file was replaced with a genuine and correct copy from my machine
(i was checking by remote control) everything begun functioning as usual,
and floppy, as well as memory stick, were again perfectly readable.

Now, about the misterious missing of that (and some other) drivers, I
suppose that this is probably due to some false trojan recognition (by some
poorly written antitrojan software). It is a matter of fact that if you
search on the net about 'fastfat.sys' file, you can also find that there are
some trojan(s) that use that name to camouflage themselves. So if a bad
written program finds a good driver file and wrongly identifies it as a
trojan, poor user cannot do anything but delete that file, as antitrojan
software suggests him (or her) ...

Anyway, thanks very much indeed, from me and my friend. As soon as I can
visit her, I will proceed on checking the entire W2K system with SFC as you
suggested.

Roberto

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Thanks for the feedback.

Hi Pegasus!
My friend told me that you are a genius (I agree of course )

After your last post I immediately verified the correctness of file
fastfat.sys (that by the way is in the %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\ dir)
and, guess what? The file was missing! AHAH.
That one and some others (curious enough).
Once the file was replaced with a genuine and correct copy from my machine
(i was checking by remote control) everything begun functioning as usual,
and floppy, as well as memory stick, were again perfectly readable.

Now, about the misterious missing of that (and some other) drivers, I
suppose that this is probably due to some false trojan recognition (by some
poorly written antitrojan software). It is a matter of fact that if you
search on the net about 'fastfat.sys' file, you can also find that there are
some trojan(s) that use that name to camouflage themselves. So if a bad
written program finds a good driver file and wrongly identifies it as a
trojan, poor user cannot do anything but delete that file, as antitrojan
software suggests him (or her) ...

Anyway, thanks very much indeed, from me and my friend. As soon as I can
visit her, I will proceed on checking the entire W2K system with SFC as you
suggested.

Roberto