Hello all. I am new here. I am from the ECN elctrical forum.
I am glad that I scrolled down the ECN page today and found this forum. I spend a good bit of time on my PC and have learned alot about it and others over the years. I relpied to a Windows updating issue in another thread today.
I have two questions that I would like to ask the members:

1) Has anyone been having issues with Vista Updates and what have you done to correct your problems. I have had to reinstall the system (3) times and it now only runs correctly if I leave automatic updating turned off and install important updates manually.

2) I have recovered a windows 98 SE PC that works fine. I plan to let my grandkids use it. I think I may have uninstalled "scandisk" from the PC. I am not even sure if win 98 had scandisk, but it does have defrag. Can I get this program back? I have looked everywhere for it. Do I need it? Or, should I just forget about it?

Thanks In Advance.....John

Scandisk in 98 is recommended to be used before a defrag and in that sense something is needed. Now its been a while since i dealt with 98 but if I remember correctly if you go into Dos you can type in the command chkdsk which will then scan your drive for errors or damages. If you type it should give you all the assoicated commands to the function.

We used to use this command in Dos all the time before when Windows came out with 98 the command was changed to say "scandisk" but the base operating system should make it work for you.
Try going to command prompt and typing the "chkdsk" in and see if that will help you. It will put trunkated or damaged files in a file for you usally file000.chk so you can delete as required. Its not as pretty as Scandisk but it is effective.

The other second I will leave to anyone else to chime in on as I'm the one that started the other thread on the updates. So you know I have now found 4 others with the same complaint as you on the XP service packs.

This is a whole lot better than ScanDisk for FAT drives.

http://esteroriverheights.com/electrical/norton/

You can get to ScanDisk by opening the hard drive's "properties" in "My Computer". There should be a tab with ScanDisk, Defragment and Backup.

Thanks much. I will try the steps you have mentioned. My concern is that I uninstalled scandisc from the add/remove programs menu. Would it have been listed as a program? I do not see defrag in this menu. I guess it is a OS program, thus not listed for removal?

As I said, this PC is for the grandkids and I am not very concerned with spending much time on it, as they will most likely destroy it in short order. I am not even sure I want to give them internet access as they are quite young.

My advice for a kid's machine (or my wife) is to load up a machine from scratch, get everything running well, then do a full system backup to a CDR. If they hose it up you can format the C and restore from your backup.

Greg,
I did a clean install of the OS when I got it. Then just added two free security programs. Surpisingly the kids have not taken to much interest. My wife told them it was not ready and they have left it alone. Heck, maybe they will not destroy it after all.
I planned on not backing it up. If it gets too messed up I can just reinstall the OS.
But I have enough issues with this Vista machine, that I am not evn looking at the old one.

I have just found it is a lot faster to rebuild from a backup than to load all the software from scratch. You don't need to go through all the configuration or add all the patches necessary to get it up to snuff. When you are dealing with 98SE bear in mind all of those patches on MS.COM may go away at any time.

Greg, Agree. Thanks for the reminder regarding win98 resources. Right now they have no internet connection, but are having alot of fun with CD games. Learning games.
My grandson asked me if he could go to .com. So it will not be very long before I will have to bring a phone line in there (DSL) as I have no wireless network.....John