Windows 95 Scan Disk and Safe Mode Question

[ProudTiger02]

My Mother-in-law has an old Compaq Presario 4546 computer that she plays games on. Recently, she turned it on and it showed a Scan Disk error. The error message stated: "Windows not properly shut down, one or more disk drives may have errors on it. Press any key to run scan disk". I ran scan disk and it said it fixed all of the errors, but when it reboots, it still comes up with the error.

Does anyone know how to solve the problem? Also, I know F8 gets you into Safe Mode, but how do you get out of it?

Thanks,

JS

[bucksfanjimj]

The hard drive is dying. Here's a replacement for it. Chances are you will run into BIOS limitations on seeing the entire capacity of the drive after it's formatted. They don't make IDE drives smaller than 80 gigs now. Pretty soon they will probably stop making them altogether.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144122


If you can get the actual model # I can help you find more complete info on it.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...&product=92802

[PC_Repair_Man]

I would suggest that you back that drive up as soon as possible!!

Scandisk continually finding errors even after you've let it fix them is usually a sign of a physically dying hard drive. Has the drive been making a scratching noise or a loud knocking lately?

I'm not sure if Win95 offered the "thorough" scan option when using scandisk, but if it does then I would give that a shot. It will locate physical drive errors but it takes a really long time to scan and on a dying drive it is almost impossible to complete the scan without it freezing up. A better alternative for physically testing the HDD is with the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, you can either create a bootable 3.5" floppy or CD-ROM, boot it and follow the instructions.

Here the Hitachi drive fitness test link: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT