Solutions: Hard drive still works with bad sectors
Q: When I click on start, my computer, "C," and right-click on properties and click the Tools tab, the next window says, "This option will check the volume for errors." The next step is putting check marks in the two options for "Automatically fix files system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors." What does this process really do for the computer? What are your suggestions, step-by-step (in plain English), for what to do to make my computer files as healthy as they should be? What else can I do to make sure no unwanted files, such as spyware, infect my computer, besides frequent scans with Spybot and Ad-aware?
By John Torro, Times Correspondent
Published August 20, 2007
Q: When I click on start, my computer, "C," and right-click on properties and click the Tools tab, the next window says, "This option will check the volume for errors." The next step is putting check marks in the two options for "Automatically fix files system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors." What does this process really do for the computer? What are your suggestions, step-by-step in plain English, for what to do to make my computer files as healthy as they should be? What else can I do to make sure no unwanted files, such as spyware, infect my computer, besides frequent scans with Spybot and Ad-aware?
A: The Windows operating system keeps a master index of the files on your system, along with their location (physically on the disk) and size. The first part of the disk error check verifies this information. The second phase of the scan checks for physically damaged sectors, which are areas on the surface of a hard drive. Hard drives contain millions of sectors, and it is normal for some of these sectors to go bad during the life span of a drive. When this happens, the data in those sectors may be lost, but the data on the rest of the disk will be unaffected, and the disk is still completely usable. When bad sectors are found during the error scan, they are marked as unusable. Once marked as unusable, the operating system will know not to attempt to store data in that bad sector. Along with the usual antivirus and spyware precautions, the Windows System File Checker (SFC) is a good utility to run when you suspect that system files have somehow been corrupted. To run the system file checker, click Start, Run, and then type in SFC /scannow (make sure you leave a space between SFC and /scannow). Have your installation CD available in case SFC needs to replace a damaged file.
Q: On my Dell Dimension E310 running Windows XP, when I go to control panel, add/remove programs, the list of programs that comes up is limited to 924PLC32 size(4095 megabytes, Dell 1.0.0), ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint (119 MB), Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0.2 Update (5.64 MB), Adobe Interactive forms Update SP1 (3.04 MB), Adobe Reader 6.0.1, AnswerWorks runtime (0.01 MB) and Apple Software Update (2.4 MB). Where are all the hundreds, if not thousands, of programs on my PC? It runs fine, but I just can't remove programs the way I should.
A: This problem could have several causes. One manifests itself with a large white space between listed programs in the Add/Remove programs. Scroll down until you can't scroll any longer and make sure more programs are not listed. If this sounds like what you're experiencing, you'll need to check the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Look for a subentry in which the program has an entry for Display Icon that contains a negative number for the icon. If so, just edit that entry to remove the negative number. Of course, if you're not familiar with editing the registry, make sure you have proper backups (Google registry backup) before attempting the change.
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