Reading scandisk.log from DOS

I am running windows 98 original. I started the day with a normal boot into windows which gave me an error 'error loading gdi.exe', then a screen that displayed 'It's now safe to turn off your computer'. I attempted booting into safe mode, but that did not work either.
I ended up booting from a windows 98 startup diskette to get into DOS. Somewhere in the process it ran scandisk and showed that it was attempting to recover the allocation unit 58277. I took the option to append the log to the existing scandisk.log, however I could not figure out to look at the log from DOS.

What should I have done to view the scandisk log? Would it have told me anything that I could have used to recover from this error?

I do use Drive Image and had a very recent image file of drive C. But, attempting to restore that image to partition C failed and left me with an invalid partition table. So I had to FDISK drive 1, create a primary DOS partition, format that partition (C), restore the image file to a different partition (D), then use drive image to copy partition D to C. That worked, but I think it also over laid the scandisk log because the one that I have now does not show any of today's activity. My C partition used to be 2996.5 Mbytes. Now it is 2996.48 Mbytes, so I assume it has flagged a sector as bad and that accounts for the size difference.

Thank you for any information you can give me.
Gordon

 

To read the scandisk log from DOS, use edit. At the a: prompt, type edit c:\scandisk.log. If that doesn't work, at the prompt just type edit. Edit will open and you can just browse to the file to open it. It's been a while but I think you use the tab key to switch the focus to the menus and then use the arrow keys to navigate the menus. Go to file>open and then browse to c:\scandisk log and select it. There may be instructions as to which keys do what at the bottom of the edit window. Don't remember for sure.

 

Windows is running again? Run Scandisk in Windows or better still, in Safe Mode. If there is a bad sector, and it is in a position where Windows resides, you will want to make certain that if the adjacent sectors may be "flakey" they are also marked.

You can see marked sectors by running defrag and looking at the disk information using Details. Bad sectors I think are marked fully red.

Run scandisk regularly to ensure adjacent sectors are marked if they start to fail. You may need to run System File Checker if you find reoccuring errors (note that SFC will also list your Windows Updates files).

From memory, in DOS Edit, Alt + Tab allows you to get to the Menu list.

Matt

 

Thank you for the Edit command information. I will have to get back into DOS and try that.

"Windows is running again?" Yes, Windows is back alive, everything is running OK at this time.
I had run a thorough scandisk on that partition 4 days before and it showed no errors at that time. That was just part of my normal maintenance and I was not having a problem then. I will watch the drive very close to see if this was a early warning of other clusters going bad.

Thanks again
Gordon

 

As Zander mentioned, edit c:\scandisk.log would probably work the best for you because you'd then be able to scroll around within the file.

There are several alternatives though:

• type c:\scandisk.log
  (works if there is less-than one screen's worth of data in the c:\scandisk.log file)
  
  
• more c:\scandisk.log
  (if there is more than one screen's worth of data in c:\scandisk.log)
  
  
• type c:\scandisk.log | more
  (an alternative to more c:\scandisk.log)
  
  
• copy scandisk.log lpt1
  (will work if you have a DOS-capable printer attached to the LPT1 [parallel] port)
  
  
• copy scandisk.log prn
  (if you have a DOS-capable printer attached to a PRN [serial or parallel] port)
  
  
• print scandisk.log
  (if the PRINT program is available and you have a DOS-capable printer attached to a PRN [serial or parallel] port)

 

Thanks,
I did get a few minutes to play around with the EDIT command. It was not what I would call user friendly to a novice DOS user like myself.
I appreciate the alternatives.

Gordon

 

You're welcome.

 

Edit is really a pretty decent program for viewing text files. If you have trouble figuring out the keys to use you can get mouse support by downloading a mouse driver and copying it to the root of your boot disk. Go here and scroll to the the section titled "I want a mouse in DOS ". Click on the mouse.com link. When it's finished downloading, copy it to your boot disk. Then boot from the boot disk and when it stops at the a: prompt, type "mouse" (without the quotes). This will give you mouse support. Once you've done this, at the a: prompt type edit. Edit should open and you should have mouse support just as you would if you were using Notepad in Windows.

 

It works great. I now have mouse support in DOS. I added it to the Windows 98 startup diskette and that makes the EDIT command a lot easier to use.
Thank you
Gordon

 

You're welcome.