I'm running a 1Ghz, 128RAM, 60GB hard drive system with Windows ME. Yesterday, I attempted to defrag my hard drive. At 10% defrag I got an error message that said it could not access part of the drive and to run scan-disk. I am aware that this occured due to a read error. When I attempted to run scan disk all seemed normal. At 97% completion it found a bad sector and then locked-up. I let it idle for hours. It could never complete the scan and I had to cancell. Next, I used the start-up disk to run scan disk in DOS. Once again, at 97% completion it locked-up. It appears that this one bad sector will not allow scan disk or defrag to function. This computer is only 3 weeks old (a week past returning) and I love it. How can I get around this problem so that I may Defrag? Thanks.

You need a new hard drive. A drive that is giving you bad sectors and is 3 weeks old is defective! If the vendor won't replace the system, try and contact the manufacturer of the hard drive. It may be easier and quicker in the long run to just replace the drive yourself.

There are several things that you can try, like Eric said, the drive might be defective. Find out what kind of hard drive that it is. Open the case and look at the drive and get the Make & Model. Maxtor, Seagate, IBM & Western Digital are the main ones. All of them warrenty their drives for longer than a year. Go to the applicable web site, look for the support section. Usually they will list a Support Phone Number, then call them. If you see the DRIVE FITTNESS SOFTWARE on the site download it and follow the instructions supplied to create a Drive Fittness Boot Floppy. Generally they will have you do this in order to rule out any Windows Errors. The software includes several utilities. I have to say that having a drive partitioned as one big 60GB partition is asking for problems. Make three partitions at least. C: for the os @ 3-5GBs, D: for your applications @ 5-8GBs and E: for your data and backups. That last partition could be further broken down. If part of the hard disk is not accessable for reasons other than actual mapping problems you could partition that section or not and have the drive be a little smaller. Unless you have large multi-media files smaller partitions are more effecient. Picture it this way as it is (access error aside)your drive is a big cavern that Windows throws everything into. You loose acces to your file allocation table and everything is lost. Backing up data is key to a happy computer owner and user. Smaller partitions make access to data faster and allow you to organize the disk as though you had several file cabinets. To exchange the drive they will have you use the software. One of the utilities is a ZERO FILL that will overwrite the entire drive. Since your system is only three weeks old you will not have that much to back up off of the machine. Do so anyway!!! All you need to get are the files that you made, your E mail, favorites and pictures. If you have a CDR, Norton makes a tool called Ghost (the current version) that spans multipule CDROMs to create a disk image of your system that can be reloaded on the drive. If you allow the HD manufacturer to ship a new drive pendig the return of the old drive you can actually CLONE your entire disk to the new drive first.... OK well the above are all possibilities that you can use to keep your data since at a minimum you will have to RE DO your hard disk.(FDISK,FORMAT,SCANDISK & REINSTALL) In any case they will have you run the test and in the end that will be how they decide if the drive is defective or not. If the test completes and a ZERO is returned than the drive will mostlikely be ruled as OK and Windows created some DIRTY DATA or DAMAGED DATA that scandisk is reading as a BAD SPOT. Any questions, post again....over and out!

Here is a follow-up to my problem... Well, it seems that the drives in the HP 7855 may be defective. I purchased a copy of McAfee Utilities and scanned the hard drive. It stated that the factory partition spills over the end of the drive and can't be accessed. When I attempted to create new partitions I couldn't because the factory partition was not readable. In other words, I could use the computer, but I would never be able to make partitions, defrag or run scandisk. I took the computer back, got a new one and, out of the box, attempted to run defrag. The same error appeared and the drive partition "spilled-over" the disk! I immediately took the second computer back. I demonstrated to the manager what was happening by running a defrag on their demo model. Guess what. It locked up. The manager then told me that many of the HP 7855's have been returned for the same reason. I called HP and, in a very professional manner,attempted to warn them of their drive problems so that they could follow-up before a recall becomes inevitable. The HP representative became very, very rude and defensive. He stated that it was the "crappy" Microsoft ME program that is "messing up" and not their hardware. He told me to wait for a patch. I explained to him that no patch was going to resolve a hard drive manufacturing problem and he said "well, as a consumer you are welcome to purchase a different manufacturers computer if that is your perogative." He then told me that the problem was not a major one and that the computer just gets a "little confused." I could see that my friendly warning was just not appreciated and hung up. I ran out and purchased a Compaq 5012 with all of the same features. It's great. It defrags and scans with ease. I also found it to be much, much quieter. The fans are almost silent and the drives don't make a constant whizzing sound like the HP did. Thanks for all of your advice. I bet we will be hearing about this problem in the future. Christopher

Bought a new emachine about 3 weeks ago, and it has been working wonderfully until this week. The font changed the first time I ran defrag. No, problem I thought, so I rebooted and all was fine. 2nd defrag yesterday and the defrag could not complete because oof bad sectors, and it suggested running thorough scan disk. I have run it twice, and asked it to automatically fix errors. It says I have I have no errors, bu 81,920 in bad sectors. I ran defrag again, and it completed just fine. Ran scandisk again and still have the bad sectors. Also the font is so screwed up I cannot read any of file names or web pages. Does anyone have a fix for this, I really would prefer not to reformat the drive. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi, I've had the same problem with my HP7855 that I bought last may. I've searched and searched for a solution and have yet to find it. HP is known for their less than favorable customer support. Like others, I don't want to go through reformat etc. I've never been able to run scandisk or defrag on my machine. Ron