Re: Strange disk problems - nonworking scandisk is a known problem, but

Hi, you mailed about scandisk causing troubles.
FD Scandisk does currently only LOOK good but does not work properly for
some people, including me. Try using other scandisk software instead, the
problem is a scandisk one and not a problem with other FreeDOS parts.
MS Scandisk seems to have problems with some FD (FreeDOS) memory managers.
Try using only a recent FDxXMS (no EMM386) or not even that. You can try
using UMBPCI instead of EMM386 if you only need UMBs and no EMS memory.


PS: If you start scandisk in "not looking like MS scandisk" mode,
you see that it only does the first one or two tests and then crashes
or hangs. In the "looking like MS scandisk" mode, the testing process
stops at that moment but you are still able to enter "Quit" as if
everything would be fine. In short: Yes, scandisk does nothing (for me).

PPS: I use dosfsck (VERY nifty in recent versions), but it uses lots of
memory - I use the Linux version, porting it to DOS would be hard due to
the memory consumption. A 32bit DOS version should be much easier (using
djgpp, the DOS version of the gcc/gpp/g++ compiler), I still hope that
some FreeDOS programmer can do that port! About alternatives to scandisk
that do not need 32bit (requires 386 CPU or better and enough memory, and
is incompatible with the current FD emm386): There is another FD project
for checking filesystems, I wonder how good the current version is? The
new project does not look nifty, but at least it does work...