Antique Help Needed Please

My sister has been telling me for months that she had a nice laptop she wanted to give me. Well I finally got it this week. "Compaq Contura 4/25" 4096 kb, 2mg RAM, loaded with Windows 3.1, Word Perfect, and Lotus. I've tried to defrag, but come up with the message: Error encountered on Drive C: Error reading the FAT. Program will now exit. I've also tried running ScanDisk, but when it gets to the directory structure I get the message: ScanDisk encountered a data error while reading the FAT on Drive C: This error prevents ScanDisk from fixing this drive. Is there anything I can do to clean up this drive?

 

Hey Muskey!! I have an old Win 3.1 manual that came with a compaq and when I saw your post I thought Huzzah! There is no mention anywhere regarding scan disc in it. It talks of defrag, AV, etc. Are you sure that 3.1 came with the scandisc feature?

 

It must. The ScanDisk window comes up on it though and it runs through "Media Descriptor" and "File Allocation", but stops when it gets to "Directory Structure". It can't get to "File Structure" or "Surface Scan"

 

From the book re defrag:

1. Delete any unneccesary files from your hard disc.

2. Quit all programs including Windows. (you cannot run defragmenter from an MSDOS promptwithin windows.

3. Check for lost allocation units by typing at the prompt chkdsk /f. If lost allocation units are founda propmpt similar to this will appear:
10 lost allocatiojm units found in three chains. Convert lost chains to files? (Press Y)

4. Start the defragmenter by typing the following at prompt: defrag

5. To select the drive you wish to defrag, use the up arrow or down arrow and push enter. The defragmenter analyzes the data on that drive and recommends a defrag option.

6. To begin defragmentation, press enter. If you want to changedefrag settings or want more info about the current defragmentation settings before you begin, press TAB to select the configure button, and then press enter. The Optimize menu will then appear.

For more informationabout the defragmenter, type help defrag at the command prompt.
(end )

I'm sure that youy know this stuff, just tryin' to help!! I typed this stright from the manual.

 

I'm not able to open DosShell neither.

 

Is File structure the same as Directory tree? Or directory list? I found nothing on Media descriptor.

 

Tried doing it by your suggestions, but still get the same messages.

 

try ALT, H, S. Book says it is an alternative to open DOSSHELL, and a help menu.

 

Nope, NFG.

 

Musky, I do not know squat about 3.1. I simply have this original compaq manual. They talk about a proggie called "DoubleSpace". Could this be the same as scandisc do you think? I'll keep looking for you, but I'm quite afraid that I'm at a loss. I'd love to help!

 

Not to worry Boccemon, It's nothing important, just something I wanted to fool around with. Thanks for taking the time it was fun.

 

Do you want to borrow this book?

 

Sounds like the Master Boot Record may be mushed. Download the Dos 6.22 bootdisk from http://www.bootdisk.com/ , stick a blank floppy in your drive, and click the downloaded file to create the boot disk.

Boot to that disk, and run scandisk. If that chokes, type

fdisk /mbr

to rebuild the boot record, then try running scandisk again. Dos 6 works with FAT16, and will work fine on that machine. Scandisk is much better at fixing things than chkdsk was.

 

Done, but it boots into C, and I can't get it to read the disk in A

 

You can run fdisk /mbr from DOS on the C: drive, it should be in the DOS dir.

Can you read from the A: drive at all or just not boot from it?

 

This notebook is set to boot from C: I am able to access and read from A:

 

Well, we can forget about it. The thing just puked and I can't even boot it up into C: anymore. Thanks for the help everyone. This is going into the circular file.

 

For completeness sake, Scandisk was an additional feature of DOS 6. DOS 6 also included a built in defragger and anti-virus scanner (note that there was no real way to update the scanner, but most viruses were transmitted by floppy). IIRC, if you installed DOS 6 on a machine with Windows 3.1, you also got the windows versions of the DOS utilities.

Previous to that, DOS 5 had chkdsk, no defrag, and no AV. Scandisk had a lot more features than old chkdsk. Namely, scandisk had the ability to do the surface scan, whereas chkdsk simply did a file system integrity check. Scadisk also offered increased data recovery abilities, but data recovery with that stuff was still pretty poor.

However, I believe that later versions of DOS 6 either did not contain DOSSHELL or did not automatically install it. I distinctly remember extracting it from my DOS 5 floppies.

 

Thanks for the help guys, but this is a waste of time trying to get this thing running. It's too far behind the times to fool with & I really don't have any floppy programs for it. Time to deep six it.

 

I've got an old version of the Norton Disk Doctor .exe (for DOS) that I could email you if you want it. You could put that on a floppy (~560K), it's much better than the DOS scandisk.