"file allocation table bad drive C"

[Cheryl]

I have an IBM ThinkPad that is suddenly unbootable.

It cycles endlessly through restarting itself without
ever getting to Windows 2000 on the hard drive.

Using a floppy, I've been able to boot to a dos prompt.

I can see the C drive with its files and directories.
However when I do a dir on the winnt directory, it lists
the files and then says:
"file allocation table bad, drive C"

I tried an anti-vrus boot disk and it errored on hundreds
of files because it couldn't read them. Many file names
were "random" ascii characters.

So, assuming I have a corrupt FAT, is there anything that
can be done? I believe I've seen tools that claim to do
this...if so, do they work and is that the only (or best)
option?

Thanks for any help,
Cheryl

 

[Ndi]

If you want the files back, you poor thing

Copy scandisk on a boot floppy and use it to scan the drive. (W95 OSR2,
W98 or better, you have FAT 32 I assume).

If you want the machine back.

My best advice would be to format it to NTFS (it doesn't get bad), check
the disk physically and then re-install Windows.