Strange system problem

[Barry Watzman]

I'm having a strange problem with my system involving the disk drive
(although I'm pretty sure it's not hardware, but software).

The system (a laptop) is dual boot and has 4 partitions:

C: Windows 98 FAT32 (10 gigs)(Primary)

Extended DOS partition containing:
D: Windows XP Pro FAT32 (11 gigs)
E: Data Fat32 (24 gigs)
F: Data NTFS (10 gigs)

The system is 3 years old and has been working fine until tonight. The
problem is that if I boot Windows 98, the 3 FAT32 partitions in the
Extended DOS partition appear very badly corrupted. In fact, Norton
Disk Doctor reports that the entire chain of logical drives in the
extended partition is corrupted, and in Windows itself, it's clear that
something is wrong, badly, seriously wrong (filenames are totally
corrupt with invalid characters).

However, if I boot XP, both XP and any diagnostic programs that I run
all report everything to be fine, and indeed everything I do (including
actual file access) under XP looks fine.

It's really odd, because the very same programs (Norton Disk Doctor,
installed separately in both OS') give totally different results
depending on which OS you are running them under.

Again, this problem has developed (or I've just become aware of it)
tonight, the system is 3 years old.

Anyone have any idea what could be going on here that things seem so
wrong under 98SE but fine under XP?

 

[Michael Cecil]

I'm having a strange problem with my system involving the disk drive
(although I'm pretty sure it's not hardware, but software).

The system (a laptop) is dual boot and has 4 partitions:

C: Windows 98 FAT32 (10 gigs)(Primary)

Extended DOS partition containing:
D: Windows XP Pro FAT32 (11 gigs)
E: Data Fat32 (24 gigs)
F: Data NTFS (10 gigs)

The system is 3 years old and has been working fine until tonight. The
problem is that if I boot Windows 98, the 3 FAT32 partitions in the
Extended DOS partition appear very badly corrupted. In fact, Norton
Disk Doctor reports that the entire chain of logical drives in the
extended partition is corrupted, and in Windows itself, it's clear that
something is wrong, badly, seriously wrong (filenames are totally
corrupt with invalid characters).

However, if I boot XP, both XP and any diagnostic programs that I run
all report everything to be fine, and indeed everything I do (including
actual file access) under XP looks fine.

It's really odd, because the very same programs (Norton Disk Doctor,
installed separately in both OS') give totally different results
depending on which OS you are running them under.

Again, this problem has developed (or I've just become aware of it)
tonight, the system is 3 years old.

Anyone have any idea what could be going on here that things seem so
wrong under 98SE but fine under XP?

First, quit relying on the crap that is Norton Disk Doctor. Seriously.

Second, boot with a DOS floppy and see how it looks from there.

 

[Barry Watzman]

From 98, it's serious screwed up. For example, under My
Documents/Winword, there are only two entries, both nothing but special
non-printable characters.

From XP, the exact same drive/folder shows all 300+ files intact,
properly named and fully accessible with the correct contents.

Norton Disk Doctor is showing what each OS (98SE and XP) are seeing, the
quesiton is, in a dual boot installation on the same hard drive, why
would 98SE see things (the entire structure of the disk drive) so
totally screwed up when XP is seeing no problems at all.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

From 98, it's serious screwed up. For example, under My
Documents/Winword, there are only two entries, both nothing but special
non-printable characters.

Obviously, there is a problem with the drive geometry or settings under Win 98.
It's possible that what started the chain of errors was Norton Disk Destroyer
(the only use I found for it is to demonstrate to data recovery trainees how to
majestically ruin a drive).

From XP, the exact same drive/folder shows all 300+ files intact,
properly named and fully accessible with the correct contents.

Norton Disk Doctor is showing what each OS (98SE and XP) are seeing, the
quesiton is, in a dual boot installation on the same hard drive, why
would 98SE see things (the entire structure of the disk drive) so
totally screwed up when XP is seeing no problems at all.

Simple: Because in order to boot XP the system uses the first set of the
extended boot sector in logical sectors 63 to 65. If you use the XP built-in
dual boot manager, then booting to Win 98 of a FAT-32 partition would use the
second set of the extended boot sector, normally written to LB 70 to 72. The
BPB data in the boot sector is what determines how the partition geometry is
seen by the operating system.

In a dual boot case like yours, the BPB in the two boot sector sets should be
identical, and they differ only in the bootstrap code contained in the first
block of each set (the first one will load NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM, the second
will load IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS).

My guess is that ND Destroyer may have messed with one of the copies of the boot
sector(s). There could be other causes for the mess, but the above is the most
likely.

Michael gave you sound advice, which you apparently ignored.

To further assess the problem and suggest how to fix it, you can do the
following:

1. Download www.resq.co.il/download/resq.exe and prepare the RESQ work floppy
*exactly* as instructed in the program's welcome dialog box.

2. Boot the PC from the floppy just prepared, with the floppy left in
write-enabled state.

3: When at the A: prompt, try a DIR command to C:\, D:\ and E:\, and tell us if
the directories and file names show properly in each respective volume.

4. Next run from the command line and A: prompt, RESQDISK /FAT32 /ASSESS The
program will go through a diagnostic cycle and pause every time it takes a
snapshot of the display. Press 'enter' when pausing, until RESQDISK terminates
normally. There will be a new text file on the floppy, named RESQDISK.RPT, for
'report'.

5. Paste the report file in your follow-up post. Pay attention to disable line
wrapping (use manual line breaks instead for this one), or change the right
margins of your news editor to 82 characters, to not break the report lines.
Also, please avoid top posting.

Regards, Zvi

 

[Barry Watzman]

What you call "Norton Disk Destroyer" was only used to do a read-only
diagnostic scan. It's not part of the problem (although it is "seeing"
the problem).

Please don't bottom post.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

What you call "Norton Disk Destroyer" was only used to do a read-only
diagnostic scan. It's not part of the problem (although it is "seeing"
the problem).

Have it your way.

Good luck, Zvi