When I try to defrag, it tells me I have to run scandisk first. When I run scandisk, I get "This drive contains one or more backup copies of the file allocation table (FAT). The copies should be identical, but aren't." Then I get 2 options: "Repair the error", and "Ignore the error and continue". When I choose to repair, I get "A program or window saved information to your drive after the previous error was detected. Scan disk must restart so it can include this new information in the scan for errors. This error and any other errors that were previously detected but not corrected may be reported again". What should the dummy (me) do here? Thanks for the help before, by the way....

Start from scratch.Delete the partitions and run fdisk to partition the hard drive,reboot and format the C primary set active with the Windows ME boot disk.The file allocation tables or FAT will never be corrected this way :they are corrupted and the program will only make things worst.Even if it is invoked it does not work.This is a weak aspect od dos.If the problem comes back there is something wrong with the hard drive.Good luck.

hello you might just have a virus in your mbr. try online scans free trojin scan http://www.trojanscan.com/trojanscan/scanner.htm panda scan http://www.pandasoftware.es/activescan/ housecall http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp d/l mcafee,s stinger http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/ you might try d/ling fprot for dos av its free and gets good rateings on removeing mbr and bios viruses. but do the above scans first.

It may seem drastic to ditch the partitions and start over again, but response #1 above is right - if the file allocation tables do not match and cannot be made to match then they may be corrupt beyond practical help. However this is a lot of reinstalling so I'd be tempted to run any other disk utility you may have to "healthcheck" the disk to confirm the problem can't be rectified before committing yourself to starting over from scratch. Sometimes programs like Norton can and similar disk repair software can salvage damaged file systems and repair them better than Scandisk. All the time the disk is still accessible, get some backups made of your data as sooner or later the disk may fail if the file system deteriorates further.