1. [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT



In this age of computers, how is it possible to be doing normal reads and writes on a harddrive, and overwrite the $MFT or FAT of a drive???

And in related OT topic, why can a file be "in use by another process", when it was one of a million written and closed by an app, and never again opened, yet winxpee says i cannot rename it, write to it, or delete it, but the other 999,999 files are fine??

Oh, and then there's the directories where there's no files, hidden or unhidden, and windoze says the directory is not empty, so it cannot be deleted or renamed?? Rebooting can fix this problem, but i am seldom in a position i can reboot a computer whenever i want.

Are there fixes to these problems?

useless

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2. Re: [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT

hi,

Instead of a reboot try scrubbing the ram, that might clear out whatever is going on ..

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

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3. Re: [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT

Euman_Overman said...

hi,

Instead of a reboot try scrubbing the ram, that might clear out whatever is going on ..

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks



Exactly how would i do that?

useless

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4. Re: [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT

Right click on desktop > New > Shortcut > Type

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

Click Next > Name it ‘Clear Memory’ Finish. Give it a suitable icon.

click the icon You created ..

the entire ptrocess may take upwards of 15 minutes. depends on Your processor and the number of task so be patient.

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5. Re: [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT

Euman_Overman said...

Right click on desktop > New > Shortcut > Type

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

Click Next > Name it ‘Clear Memory’ Finish. Give it a suitable icon.

click the icon You created ..

the entire ptrocess may take upwards of 15 minutes. depends on Your processor and the number of task so be patient.



Ok, it seems to have run a memory defragmenter(?) and not hurt anything so far. Next time winders tells me i cannot do this or that to a file, i'll run it and see if this fixes it. On plain dos5 and win95, simply flushing the cache would fix everything.

Thanks, Euman!

useless

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6. Re: [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT

The command: %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

does not clean memory or anything like that. But unfortunately there are many websites that have totally misrepresented it's function.

By default XP and later systems have a number of housekeeping operations that are normally done during idle time to avoid impairing performance. The command forces these operations to be performed immediately, regardless of system activity. This will involve a partial defrag. It does not "clean" memory. Windows is fully capable of doing that on it's own without user intervention.

See this article for more information: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/mscomops/thread/83e1d0cb-ca82-4703-afe0-9b23d97d3df6

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7. Re: [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT

LarryMiller said...

The command: %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

does not clean memory or anything like that. But unfortunately there are many websites that have totally misrepresented it's function.

By default XP and later systems have a number of housekeeping operations that are normally done during idle time to avoid impairing performance.



Thanks, Larry.
I have six wintel boxes running 3Ghz+ P4 singlecores with 2gig of ram, mangled by winxp (all upgrades and patches fairly current) staying busy between 80% and 100% cpu 24-7 for months. The other computers are less busy. Even with sleep(x) sprinkled around in the Eu apps, these boxes stay busy, so does the lan and the harddrives. Everything is quite warm.

Do you have any experience in keeping things running smoothly, despite MS and winxp?

useless

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8. Re: [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT

Euman_Overman said...

Right click on desktop > New > Shortcut > Type

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

Click Next > Name it ‘Clear Memory’ Finish. Give it a suitable icon.

click the icon You created ..

the entire ptrocess may take upwards of 15 minutes. depends on Your processor and the number of task so be patient.


Didn't work.

The dir cannot be deleted because it's aledgedly in use by another process, but no process has used it since last reboot, except explorer, which moved all the files out of it.

useless

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9. Re: [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT

look up file locking and read!

Euman

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10. Re: [OT] overwriting FAT and $MFT

Euman_Overman said...

look up file locking and read!

Euman


Well, i thought you knew what you were talking about earlier.

I downloaded Process Explorer from Sysinternals (M$, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653 ), and it said Explorer (also from M$) had the dir locked. So i popped up mirc (because it's a handy non-M$ interface) and Taskmanager (again , M$), killed Explorer in Taskmanager and restarted it with "run explorer.exe" in mirc, and was able to delete the empty dir that explorer had screwed up the attributes flags on.

useless

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