4 replies to this topic

[bizzybody]

I have a FAT32 hard drive I want to reformat to get rid of everything but it has a bunch of corrupted files. Doesn't matter, I don't care, just going to wipe them all.

Well XP has a different idea. It wants to run scandisk and thrash the drive to death trying to save useless junk.

I used Autopatcher on this system and selected the lower scandisk's wait time patch. The problem is Scandisk completely ignores me pressing any key to stop it in during the 5 second wait.

I've tried it with a USB and a PS/2 keyboard and neither works even though I can use either to get into the BIOS setup.

So how about a fix to make Scandisk pay attention to the user, while also shortening the wait to 5 seconds?

[_def_x_]

The patch is for NTFS volumes (chkntfs.exe) not FAT (chkdsk.exe). You could run "chkdsk.exe /?" for a list of available switches.

Also, have you looked into a freeware or an open source program for checking and reformatting a drive?

[Cristiano]

just a hint: if any of the partitions is tagged as "dirt", scandisk will run every single boot. but sometimes the version for command-line doesn't work and then you have to run the windows version in order to get rid of it.

> I've tried it with a USB and a PS/2 keyboard
usb keyboards only works on boot if "enable legacy support" is enabled at bios. sometimes, certain bios also have an "enable usb keyboard", that shall be checked in order to work on boot

also, an idea: check your hd. it may be dying.

[]s

[bizzybody]

I have the USB legacy support enabled and the USB keyboard works to get into BIOS setup. So does a PS/2 keyboard.

The problem is whatever's been done with Autopatcher to reduce the time to abort scandisk has also completely blocked it from being aborted. The problem is if I allow scandisk to complete a pass on this badly corrupted drive it's likely to destroy it by banging the heads back and forth while trying to save completely useless files I don't want to save.

I just need to skip scandisk so I can use the Disk Management to delete the partition then create a new partition and do a full format to refresh it. The drive came from a PC that suffered a really nasty malware attack which corrupted the directory.

I *could* connect the drive up by itself and boot with a Windows CD and nuke it that way, but that's *not* solving the problem of not being able to abort Scandisk before it starts.

[Cristiano]

for sure not. but this is an windows issue, not an autopatcher issue. this was the designed behavior for this tool. but there's one way by bypass that, that is renaming the chkdsk related to the file system that you have. but you will require an boot cd in order to do that. also, the "tweak about scandisk wasn't designed to make easy to abort, that tweak was designed to short the delay time to run it. only that. also, scandisk doesn't destroy an drive. if the drive is already defective (and, by your description, already is) wipe it out will not solve the issue either. also, there's not an real need of an windows to remove and create another partition. you can do it with the windows installer himself or even an bootable solution, like ubcd or even with the tools provided by the hd maker.

[]s