Monday, April 22, 2002		Dr Tribune

Q I have been encountering a problem with defragmenting for the last couple of days. Whenever I try to defragment my D: drive, it give an error "Error defragmenting Drive D: Windows cannot finish defragmenting this drive because it has encountered a problem. Click help and carry out the instruction for running Scan Disk and then try defragmentation again. ID No:DEFRAG00205." When I go to help, they ask me to run scandisk in thorough mode, which I do. Then the scandisk displays that an error was found and I corrected it but still this doesn’t work. I have run scandisk in thorough and DOS mode but that didn’t help too. Now the scandisk doesn’t show any error but defragment does. Please tell me what to do?

— Alam, Amritsar

A This error occurs, if the Applog file in the hidden C:\ Windows\ Applog folder is damaged. In order to resolve this problem, Right-click an empty area on the desktop, and then click Properties. Now on the Web tab, click Folder Options and then Click Yes. Now on the View tab under Hidden files, click Show all files, and then click OK. Now Click Start, point to Find, and then click Files or Folders. In the Named box, type applog, click C: in the Look in box, click to select the Include subfolders check box, and then click Find Now. Double-click the Applog folder to open it. On the Edit menu, click Select all. On the File menu, click Delete, and then click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the deletion. This will solve your problem.

Q My PC configration is P III 933, 128 MB Ram, 40 GB HDD, ASUS 810e MB, 52x CD- ROM and d-link internal modem. My problem begins after I start watching movie in Windows Media Player from CD. After some time, the message appears "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problem persists, contact the program vendor" with options Close, Debug, Detail. When we click on ‘Close,’ WM Player is shut down. I had upgraded its latest version from the Internet and have already run thorough surface following defragmentation. I also removed it and re-installed but this problem is still there. Prior to the download of the latest version, the problem persisted. The same movie CD comfortably ran on electronic CD Player. I loaded the other software "Power Player", which is available to me through my motherboard CD. The Power Player also shows the same error message. The same error message appears when we watch any other movie CD. I have also run the PC Cillin anti-virus scan that resulted in no virus. Please help me to solve my problem.

Vikram Soni,

Panchkula.

A You may need to increase your RAM and also increase the paging file size to solve this problem. Also, keep a good amount of your hard disk free as this could also lead to errors. I hope these solutions will solve your problem.

Q I am having a PC with P III processor, 20 GB HDD, Win ’98 and Win XP as operating system on drive C: and drive D:, 128 MB RAM and Motorola SM56 internal modem. I have following problems:

1.) When I select Win '98 as operating system to run, I almost receive a message: The following file is missing or corrupt C:\ OAKCDROM.SYS. There is error in configure. sys file on line 1. And without pressing any key, the message disappears. Please tell how to remove the message. I had also done the Win set up.

2.) Can I use compression on my drives to increase free space without any type of problem coming after this? Please tell.

3.) I have customised some of my folders, but after some time they are automatically removed. Why? Also this message always appears on '98 that an error occurred in Internet explorer. Internet explorer will now close if you continue to experience the problem please restart machine.

And then after pressing Enter, a message appears that this program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. OK. After this I am not able to open my computer and recycle bin. Please tell me the solution to this problem.

Samir,
Kapurthala

A Regarding your first problem, First find OAKCDROM.SYS AND MSCDEX.EXE

and then copy these files to C:\ . Both these files should be on your windows boot disk. Now add this to your config.sys below

DEVICE=C:\ WINDOWS\ HIMEM.SYS /testmem:off

DEVICE=C:\ WINDOWS\ EMM386.EXE

LASTDRIVE=Z

DEVICE=C:\ OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001

Add this line below to your autoexec.bat

C:\ MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001 /M:8 /V /L:Z

This will make your cdrom drive Z. If you want it to be drive D change your config.sys to >> lastdrive=D and in the autoexec.bat change to C:\ MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001 /M:8 /V /L:D. Actually Oakcdrom.sys is a generic driver for a lot of CD ROMs. If it does not work, then you can download a new CDROM driver from the site of your hardware manufacturer. I hope this solution will solve your problem. Regarding your second query, you can compress your files, without any problems and can create some extra space on your hard disk. Regarding your other problems please run scandisk in thorough mode followed by disk defragmentation.

Q I have an assembled PC with following configuration: P-III 733, OS Win ’98, 20 GB HDD, 128 RAM, 52X CD-drive and Priya motherboard 810 model: - BST1B-E BIOS V1.6, SYSTEM BIOS: -Award flash international, Inc. 6.00 PG.SMBIOS/DMI v2.20 with integrated chipset sis 630. Are these compatible to each other, as I have installed Sisoft Sandra it gives a notice that SMBIOS/DMI information may be inaccurate. What should I do? My problem is that the device manager shows that in other devices PCI Ethernet Controller is not installed properly. Another problem is that when I use scan disk it restarts again and gives the message Window or some other program is writing to disk. Close it to finish the scan disk sooner. Also display controller does not get IRQ. It displays NA. But display drivers are installed properly. How to overcome these problems.

Baljit Singh

A Your hardware is compatible with each other and has no problem as such. However, you may have to load the system defaults in the BIOS feature setup and this will solve your problem. Regarding your second problem, you should first remove the PCI Ethernet controller and then restart the Windows and after restarting the Windows, you must reinstall the PCI Ethernet controller again. Regarding your third problem, please disable your screensaver or any other video wallpaper etc, and also disable anti-virus system. I think this should solve your problem.

Q I have P III, Win '98 Se. My question is how to do low-level formatting for floppies?

Japnam & Barinder Jassal

A This is a technical question as low level formatting of floppy is not something, which you would come across normally although it is the prerequisite for using a floppy and every floppy has to be low-level formatted before it can be used. However, this part is being done by the manufacturer. However, you may also low-level format your hard disk for two basic reasons. First to check the media integrity or second to force the disk capacity to be bigger. But whatever may be the reason, for low level formatting of your floppy disk, you need to use fdformat.

This utility expects the device name as an argument. Then you can use /dev/fdX.size devices, which will allow to format the floppy to its real size, or force them to a bigger size. So, for low level formatting the floppy disk, insert your floppy in the drive and give the command # /usr/sbin/fdformat /dev/rfd0.1440. To force the floppy disk size, use other entries in /dev. Get the same floppy and issue:

# /usr/sbin/fdformat /dev/rfd0.1720.

This will low-level format your floppy disk. However, there are many more steps in it to use this floppy in your computer, which includes creating disk label, high level formatting and loading file system etc.