strange behavior of scandisk (DOS-Version, Win98SE)

[asdfghjkl]

I scanned a floppy disc w/ scandisk including the surface test. The floppy was write-protected. The surface tests said, that cluster 2810 was damaged, but that it couldnt be repaired, because the disk was write-protected and that i should restart the program. so i removed the write protection and ran scandisk again, but this time the surface test didnt find an error.

After this I did a scan w/ the floppy write protected again, but this time it didnt find an error.


Does anyone know, what could be the reason for such a behavior?

I never had this kind of behavior before w/ scandisk.


Btw, cluster 2810 isnt used by a file.



Thanks in advance.

[NorthViking]

Hi,
Have you tried other floppys ? Yours might be damaged and it prolly only can find error when it's not write-protected.

[asdfghjkl]

Hi,
Have you tried other floppys ? Yours might be damaged and it prolly only can find error when it's not write-protected.

yes, i tried one other floppy, but this didnt have an error.

it only found an error when the floppy was write-protected, but only the first time i scanned it. i scanned it only one time after that and it didnt find an eroor then, but i could scan it again.

[milan]

no worries here...

first of all: scandisk follows a different procedure when analysing write-protected drives.

what happened?

first that scandisk tried here, is to read the floppy. after that it makes write-trials.
in write mode, the scandisk is processing cluster by cluster...when it reads a cluster
it is immediately writing it back. If scandisk does not succeed to write it back,
then it tries 3 times to write it back in an other possible clean region(you hear then
all this repeating noise coming from the floppy drive)
if it does not work, it can mean
a) the targeted cluster is damaged
b) the targeted cluster is blocked

in your case it was b) .. unfortunately coming along with a wrong message,
telling you that there is damage

[asdfghjkl]

but from what you post, it must have already recognized cluster 0 as damaged.

i have seen, that whenb the floppy was write protected at the beginning of the surface scan the floppy drive made a lot of noise. after this the test ran much faster than when it was not wirte-protected. so it seems, like scandisk uses a different testing method for write-protected floppies.

[milan]

well..you did not say if the error occurred at the beginning or end..
i would not worry anyway....the alledged part must not necesserily be recognized right at the beginning

[asdfghjkl]

well..you did not say if the error occurred at the beginning or end..

i said, that it is on cluster 2810. cluster 2810 is nearly at the end (a floppy disc has 2880 sectros, but only 2847 clsuters, because the rest of the sectors are used for things like the mbr and the file system).

[milan]

interesting approach. i think you know the answer.

[asdfghjkl]

interesting approach. i think you know the answer.

what do you mean?

[NorthViking]

Why not just go with another disk ??

[milan]

why not just go with XP or Win2k ?? .. scandisk win98 is full of bugs

[DABhand]

I believe there is a new virii around, today while in friends PC shop a total of 7 people reported the same problem with scandisk repeatingly starting up each reboot/reset.

Too much of a coincedence if you ask me.

[asdfghjkl]

i have the autostart of scandisk disabled completely.

i also tried chkdsk in winxp, but it didnt find an error on this floppy disk.

[Holymoses]

I believe there is a new virii around, today while in friends PC shop a total of 7 people reported the same problem with scandisk repeatingly starting up each reboot/reset.

Too much of a coincedence if you ask me.


I've seen a virus like this before its an older type it doesn't corrupt MBR but it corrupts the Programs itself. it attaches a small amount of code in the gaps of the program. thats a bit hard to explain but your system drive is made up of blocks with x amount of space in each one. not all blocks are filled with information always and the virus puts codes in these spaces that run when you run the program and replicate themselves with any exe that is started after this program is run. in the case of windows. your Kernel is infected then everything you run will be as well. I forget the name of the virii now but they did act very similar to this.

I would check Norton/Symantec Mcaffee and F-Prot even see what they have as well.. Not 100% its a virus but if its consistent on multiple systems its likely it could be.
HM

[asdfghjkl]

I dont think, that it is a virus. i just amde a scan w/ avg on all program files, and it didnt find a virus. I used the nweset virus definitions:

Virus Database: 486
Release Date: 07/29/04