I'm reporting the resolution of my problem. with thanks to you and Dennis and mr. mark and PMS Witch and Judy....
I can run ScanDisk! I can defrag!
tc, your way of getting into Safe Mode is very easy. I just waited for the beep, ctrl key, there it was.
I had help from expertcity.com. I really recommend them highly. I have no "security" concerns at all. It isn't a direct link to the expert, it's through the company's technology, which is miraculous. And these people are trying to solve your problem as fast as they can and get on to the next big spender ($10. is what I paid for one call; 9.75 for the other. I didn't really have to pay for the one that didn't solve the problem completely, but he tried his best, and contributed to the outcome, and spent time with me, so i of course i paid.) (The experts are very anxious to please you because after each session you get an evaluation page to fill out, and the collections of comments constitute their "resumes.")
Just in case anyone is curious, the success followed creating a boot disk of Windows ME and running the ScanDisk.exe file from there. There were no problems found. But then when I rebooted, I was able to defrag.
One thing that happened is when I made the boot disk, it said it was booting the emergency disk in those white letters on a black screen, and to wait.
I had waited 15 minutes when the phone rang. It was a friend whom I told what was going on and asked how long he thought i should wait. He said a couple of minutes, and asked if there was a blinking cursor. I said yes. He said "Type ScanDisk there." So when I did, ScanDisk ran.
The instructions given by Vimal to "run ScanDisk" assumed I would know I was supposed to type the word "ScanDisk" where the cursor throbbed. If the phone hadn't run, i'd probably have followed the instructions on the screen and waited obediently for weeks. Months.
You were so right. Perseverance prevails. |
