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FAT 32 error

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DucatiHoney

DucatiHoney

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I have an older desktop system and it takes, like, 10 minutes to boot up. It's some sort of error that I knew about when I bought the computer from a buddy a while back. The computer has been working fine and still does, but this evening I got a FAT 32 error for the first time upon startup. That has me a bit worried... Did a bit of hunting and found that if I type "chkdsk /f" under the Start ---> Run menu it'll do a little check and hopefully fix this error.

In the event that that does not work, can anyone recommend a good, quick place in SF to have my computer looked at?

And as a final alternative does anyone have any good secret computer buying stores? I was thinking Costco. I'm a PC person due to work stuff. I need a machine that will run some light/moderate-weight graphic programs like AutoCAD and Photoshop. I don't do much rendering in my work.
 
If it's FAT32, I'm going to guess that it's Windows 98? But with the chkdsk /f command that's either Windows 2000 or Windows XP and neither of those should be on FAT32 in the first place. Moot point but... which OS tells us which way to go with it for potentially cleaning it up.

First, backup anything you need/want now before going any further this COULD cause issues with the system including rendering it unbootable. It's not likely, but it could.

If it's Windows 2000/XP the command you want is "chkdsk /x /r" tell it yes and let it reboot. This will take a long time.

If it's Windows 98... that will be a little more details on what you need to do. I'm not going to type it all out if I don't have to. heh
 
Stuff is backed up. I have all my info in four different places I think.

I'm running Windows XP, 2002 is the year on it according to the computer.
 
A FAT32 error is probably caused by an unclean restart or misbehaving program, but it could also be due to a pending drive failure. If you have any data on the computer that's important, I'd back it up now.

Personally, I'd start with a checkdisk as you mentioned. If that doesn't fix things, a wipe/re-install might be a good bet, or a replacement hard disk and a fresh OS install.
 
I just finished working for the evening, backed up again and am going to give fixing this a shot. Cross your fingers for me! I think I might go pick up a new hard drive at Fry's this week, too. Can't hurt...
 
Good to hear on the backups. You'd be surprised how rarely people are actually doing that. Even trained professionals. :laughing

The chkdsk command I gave you forces a surface scan of the disk. If it's failing that should tell you. You might also look in the event viewer (eventvwr.msc) for any errors and see if that will tell you a little more than what you're currently getting. That's notoriously silent about failing hardware though, usually but I have seen entries on occasion that have said bad cluster or error reading from disk due to failure type entries.

My guess is that it's a failing hdd or corrupt data. Typically what I do in a case like this if it is for my own equipment is let that full scan run to fix any corrupted data. Then I will use a drive copy tool such as Acronis, Ghost or whatever to copy over to another drive just to be safe. Then security wipe the old drive and recycle it. Drives are too cheap to let it cause downtime and headaches. The only problem is if the machine is too old you might have a hard time finding an IDE drive for it on a store shelf if that's the type of HDD it uses. Let me know, I have plenty lying around if you need/want one or 20. They are slated for recycle. They just haven't made it that far yet.
 
DucatiHoney said:
I just finished working for the evening, backed up again and am going to give fixing this a shot. Cross your fingers for me! I think I might go pick up a new hard drive at Fry's this week, too. Can't hurt...
Click to expand...
I usually do a chkdsk /r from the recovery console, (The /r attribute does the most through check & fix of the OS.) but I don't understand why you're getting a fat32 error with XP? Sounds like somebody loaded it with fat32 instead of ntfs?
You could probably just wipe & reload it, but a new HDD would be good at this point; cheap insurance.

Good luck
 
I woke up this a.m. and my desktop screen looked exactly the same as it always does. There were no messages of any kind. I guess that's good. I know it was running the scans last night. I was on 4 out of 5 when I went to bed.

The habitually slow booting has always made me think something was up, and this is probably the computer's first warning shot. I'm going to try to find a new harddrive this weekend. The hubby is out of town this weekend and he's usually the guy that deals with this stuff. I also need to find all the discs that have my programs before I get creative. I'm 99% sure they're all in one spot waaaaaay up in the closet.

I've been through this twice before, so I've become a bit nutso about backups.
 
DucatiHoney said:
I woke up this a.m. and my desktop screen looked exactly the same as it always does. There were no messages of any kind. I guess that's good. I know it was running the scans last night. I was on 4 out of 5 when I went to bed.

The habitually slow booting has always made me think something was up, and this is probably the computer's first warning shot. I'm going to try to find a new harddrive this weekend. The hubby is out of town this weekend and he's usually the guy that deals with this stuff. I also need to find all the discs that have my programs before I get creative. I'm 99% sure they're all in one spot waaaaaay up in the closet.

I've been through this twice before, so I've become a bit nutso about backups.
Click to expand...

Instead of dropping $100 on a New HDD. Perhaps consider backing up the data, and replacing said PC with a $300-400 cheapie. That won't be running on antiquated hardware.
 
I installed that program, /dev/null. I believe I configured it correctly. I'll check in on it and might post the info if I have any questions about it.

Thanks! Might start pricing computers as well as hard drives this weekend. I just hate changing machines. It's such a hassle.
 
DucatiHoney said:
I installed that program, /dev/null. I believe I configured it correctly. I'll check in on it and might post the info if I have any questions about it.

Thanks! Might start pricing computers as well as hard drives this weekend. I just hate changing machines. It's such a hassle.
Click to expand...

You've never changed a hard drive have ya? Not much difference... :laughing
 
I have the boy do it. He opens jars, kills spiders, and deals with my computer crap.
 
yeah to replace your current HDD with a new one you might as well get a new computer...

infact for 500$ you can get a machine that'll BLOW THE CRAP out of anything you bought in 02 lol
 
DucatiHoney said:
I have the boy do it. He opens jars, kills spiders, and deals with my computer crap.
Click to expand...
:rofl I do most of that stuff, but make my wife/sister kill the spiders & ants; I don't want the bad Karma. :rofl

You can get a new HDD from Tiger or New Egg for around $40; it all depends on what you want to do with da 'puter?
I have an 11 yr old Dell that's still going strong, fine for web surfing checking emails & stuff.
I've never seen a FAT32 error on XP myself, I think whoever loaded it just did a shitty job, and loaded the OS FAT32? I worked at a place that did that. :thumbdown
 
A bit more info on this. I called up the buddy that set up my machine and he said that when he did it he had nothing to do with FAT32. He asked me if I had a flash drive plugged in when I saw the error and I told him that I did. He said that might be the culprit. Thoughts? How do I check for that?
 
DucatiHoney said:
A bit more info on this. I called up the buddy that set up my machine and he said that when he did it he had nothing to do with FAT32. He asked me if I had a flash drive plugged in when I saw the error and I told him that I did. He said that might be the culprit. Thoughts? How do I check for that?
Click to expand...
Yeah, them flash drives are FAT32. Of course you're supposed to stop them before removing, and maybe having a program open on the flash drive, then removing the flash improperly corrupted some files? I usually just rip 'em out myself, and have never had a problem?
 
It was a cheap flash drive. I usually have one in the computer to back up anything that I'm working on daily. I toss it in my purse and then stick the other one in there. I alternate like that everyday. ... Just in case someone decides to bust into the place and tear things up or make off with my stuff at least I have my work handy. I back up everything onto the boy's computer every few weeks. And then we both back up to an external hard drive monthly. And I have CD's of my portfolio completely separate--and back-ups of those. Like I said...back ups are not the issue.
 
DucatiHoney said:
It was a cheap flash drive. I usually have one in the computer to back up anything that I'm working on daily. I toss it in my purse and then stick the other one in there. I alternate like that everyday. ... Just in case someone decides to bust into the place and tear things up or make off with my stuff at least I have my work handy. I back up everything onto the boy's computer every few weeks. And then we both back up to an external hard drive monthly. And I have CD's of my portfolio completely separate--and back-ups of those. Like I said...back ups are not the issue.
Click to expand...
Sounds like a good home back up plan. :thumbup
Are you a cougar?
 
As for your slow start-up times, many startup programs is often the culprit.

To reduce start up programs in XP - Start->run->type "msconfig"->startup tab and uncheck boxes of programs you have no need to start when your computer does - probably java, adobe reader, google updater, itunes (if you have it)

Actually you can uncheck everything in this list if you wanted to.

Also, I agree, if you're considering buying a new HD, it would definitely be worth considering buying a new PC instead - they're extremely cheap and a new computer with Windows 7 and a dual-core processor is a beautiful thing!
 
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