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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Investor2 who wrote (8554)	3/4/2000 5:31:00 PM
From: PMS Witch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110626

Your operating system stores pieces of your files all over your disk. It also keeps track of where these pieces are located and stores this information when closing the file. If this process doesn't complete, the pieces are stored but the 'map' of where they are gets lost. ScanDisk checks that every piece on your disk is known to belong to a file. If it finds an 'orphan' piece, it collects it/them together into a file and names the file FILEXXXX.CHK, incrementing each XXXX by one until all pieces are 'adopted', leaving your entire disk space accounted for. ScanDisk does the work formerly done by CheckDisk, or CHKDSK; hence, the .CHK extension. In very rare cases, and with a very small number of files, you may discover a .CHK file contains the missing data you've lost. In the majority of cases, the .CHK files contain meaningless junk and can be deleted. Experts can re-construct damaged file chains, given time and talent. For most users, it isn't worth it. Cheers, PW. P.S. I now delete all .CHK files I encounter without hesitation.

To: Investor2 who wrote (8554)	3/5/2000 12:45:00 AM
From: orygun	Respond to of 110626

What are these *.chk files? Can I view the contents of the files? (wordpad and notepad just show jibberish.) Can I safely delete these files? You can probably delete these. I've never been able to retrieve any useful info from them. These are lost clusters formed when your system has crashed. You could look at them in notepad, but unless you know where they came from - they're useless. Sounds like your system needs a spring cleaning. Especially if you're getting that error of too many files in the root directory. Backup all data, Fdisk, Format and re-install Windows fresh. I know that sounds like a tremendous amount of work, but the aggravation of a poorly running system is much more costly. Orygun