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Why Scandisk dies while checking FAT - WIN 98

Posted By : Michael of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on November 24, 2004

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I guess my FAT is hosed. My battery died and when I turned the laptop back on, it goes through the normal scandisk routine then freezes at about 4%. It sits there FORever and then says that scandisk cannot finish due to FAT problems.

Safe mode: same thing. Scandisk tries to run then fails.

Dos prompt mode works.

WIN 98 Startup disk: I can get to the A prompt or the C prompt. My files seem to be there.

chkdsk says to run scandisk

scan disk crashes at 29% while checking FAT.

OH if I could just get into Windows once and retrieve all of my data!

I can copy to a floppy, but OMG that will take forever.

Any suggestions?

I am so grateful that I found this forum!!

This question was answered on November 24, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


If you are concerned about the integrity of the files on the hard drive, you could always get another one, reload Win98, the copy whatever is critical from the old to the new drive.

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Posted by Michael of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on November 24, 2004

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