XP in FAT32

[Max The Dog]

We bought a new hard drive and it installed fine. Now,
months later, periodically it takes 2 hours to boot up
XP. We've decided for the time-being to just leave the PC
on.

Someone said the FAT32 format is wrong for XP Home. Is
that true and if so how can I fix this? Will the machine
fail? Thanks.

 

[André Cruz]

Hello,
You can go to Start-Run- cmd and then in the prompt windows - convert c
/FS:NTFS and enter and after that your drive will be converted from fat32 to
ntfs... notice that if your installation it's not in c you should change it.
As for the time to start up maybe you are infected with something like
spyware or maybe a virus...

 

[abc]

If your pc takes 2 hours to boot up converting from fat32 to ntfs isn't
going to fix it. I have several XP disks that I swap in and out of my
system and one of them is fat32, it doesn't take any longer to boot from a
fat32 files system then from an ntfs one. Find what's wrong first.

We bought a new hard drive and it installed fine. Now,
months later, periodically it takes 2 hours to boot up
XP. We've decided for the time-being to just leave the PC
on.

Someone said the FAT32 format is wrong for XP Home. Is
that true and if so how can I fix this? Will the machine
fail? Thanks.

 

[Bob Harris]

I have used XP on a FAT32 disk for several years, with no significant
problems. So, FAT32 is probably not the cause of the slowness.

Things to try/investigate:

1. From a command prompt, do CHKDSK C: /R. Then, reboot. Watch the screen
for 5-10 minutes for any sign of disk errors, especially any that CHKDSK can
not fix. Then, let the pC continue to check the disk bit-by-bit. This may
take hours.

2a. Defrag the disk using the MS (free) defragger. If things are not
improved, move on to 2b.
2b. Get Diskeeper, full version, and do a boot-time defrag, then a
windows-level defrag.

3a. Try starting in SAFE mode. Is that any faster? If so, you might havea
bad driver, or some other slow process that is not invokded when in safe
mode.
3b. If SAFE mode helps, try to discover what is the problem by doing a
selective startup, leavinf some things on and others off, but not less than
was on in SAFE mode. Use Run --> MSCONFIG to control the startup.

4. Have you scanned for viruses lately? Are your virus defintions and
software up to date?

5. Have you scanned for Spyware lately? Free spyware removers inclue
Spybot Search & Destroy, and Adaware.

6. How much RAM do you have? XP like > 128 Meg, but may run in as little as
64Meg, but not well. Verify the RAM sensed by XP by the main screen in
MyComputer --> right-click properties. If XP see less RAM than you have,
try re-seating the RAM or replacing it.

Good luck.

 

[Al Dykes]

I had the same problem with My FAT32 Hard disc but when i changed it over to
NTFS it works fine.

Are you doing a clean shutown ?

Look in Event Viewer and see if there is any problem
reported during startup.

 

[Max The Dog]

How do you convert fat32 to ntfs?

Thanks.

-----Original Message-----

 

[André Cruz]

Hello,
You can go to Start-Run- cmd and then in the prompt windows - convert c
/FS:NTFS and enter and after that your drive will be converted from fat32 to
ntfs... notice that if your installation it's not in c you should change it.
As for the time to start up maybe you are infected with something like
spyware or maybe a virus...

 

[Norm]

Click Start, Help and Support, enter Convert and it will explain it all.

How do you convert fat32 to ntfs?

Thanks.

-----Original Message-----

 

[Max the Dog]

I'd like to try your solution but I can't make out your
commands. Can you please type them more clearly. I'm
assuming you mean at the c prompt type /convert c/FS:NTFS.

Is that correct? Thanks.

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 08:41:01 -0700, "Ben Roberts"

I had the same problem with My FAT32 Hard disc but when i changed it over to
NTFS it works fine.

Watch your back!

When a HD starts to fail, it may slow things down because repeated
attempts are made to read the same failing sector (retry loop).

The HD's firmware will attempt to gloss over this by relocating the
failing sector's contents to a good, spare sector. If that works,
then the speed impact goes away... for that sector, at least.

If NTFS, then the OS tries to pull the same trick.

Which is all very well, but if your HD is dying, wouldn't you rather
know about it before it dies outright and takes your data with it?

"Max The Dog" wrote:

Rubbish.

See http://cquirke.mvps.org/ntfs.htm

-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Running Windows-based av to kill active malware is like striking
a match to see if what you are standing in is water or petrol.

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

Click Start, Help and Support, enter Convert and it will explain it all.

What it won't tell you in so many words, is that if anything goes
wrong halfway through the process, you could lose everything.

From your posts, it seems likely you have a sick HD. That would be
reason to expect disaster when running a FAT32 to NTFS conversion
process that involves reading and re-writing just about every data
sector on the HD. Oh, and there's no way to convert back either.

-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Hmmm... what was the *other* idea?