Ah, the registry. The registry is only of Microsoft's biggests curses
placed on their own platform. The registry only, ever grows in size and
can not be shrunk once it grows. Installing new software often requires
the registry to grow in size. Removing software (and associated registry
entries) may allow the removed entries to be reused, however, this can
result in registry data being physically scattered all over the registry
and the hard drive. This translates to poor performance and an ever
growing registry. Typically, most desktop users experience a breaking
point every 18 to 36 months. This means, poor system performance,
registry and/or filesystem corruption, and system stabiity issues. Many
shops will simply "ghost" a copy onto systems every 12 - 18 months just to
avoid the headaches. This often fixes many random and odd problems,
which older systems tend to experience. The exact window generally
relates to the number of applications which have been installed and/or
removed and the associated order in which such actions occurred. Not to
mention the effort which has been placed on the system to maintain a
current patch level and frequency at which service packs have been
installed and maintained.

If your friend's original installation is older than 18 to 35 months,
especially if he's experienced filesystem corruption in the past, a fresh
installation of the OS on up, should be considered. While time consuming
and a headache to backup and restore old data and applications, users are
often rewarded with stability and speed over the next 18 to 36 months. At
which time, you're usually good for another rinse and repeat cycle.

If you friend was experiencing some of these problems in the past, simply
migrating these problems to a new drive can be very frustrating. As such,
replacing an old drive with a new drive often makes for an excellent
window to start afresh again.

While I certainly would not say that any of this is required, I would
recommend that it should be considered.

Cheers and good luck! Sorry to hear that your friend is having so many
problems.

Greg

On Thu, 20 May 2004 23:41:50 +0000, Derek wrote:

Hi Greg,

Many thanks for your detailed help.

My friend has done as you say, and let the file checker do its stuff which
it did succesfully, and he can now boot up normally.

He has also solved some of his probs with FS2004 but has a gut feeling it
still wasnt running as it should.

So he has now taken his PC back to the shop, and they are formatting the
hard drive they only just installed the other day. Amongst other things,
even when he had his OLD hard drive we think there was something wrong in
his registry, that was blocking certain volumes of the "Just Flight VFR
Scenery" package series for FS2002/4 being installed.

His PC was due back from the shop today, but he hasnt phoned me so I presume
there has been a delay.

Thanks for all your help my friend

Derek
"Greg Copeland" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 13 May 2004 20:48:03 +0000, Derek wrote:


1. On boot up, his PC (he is using Windows XP), starts giving "file
.
.
.
How does he stop his PC attempting to go through the above lengthy
process
each time on boot up ? Does he have to let it go through the complete
procedure at least once ? After that should he no longer get the warning
?


Yes. The drive is marked as "dirty" until it's able to complete this
diagnostic and correct step. It will be marked "clean" once it completes.
After which, assuming nothing else funky is going on here, it should boot
without requiring this step.

I should also point out that if he does have file system problems,
continued use of the filesystem while it damage can greatly extend the
damage to the filesystem. It's very possible to much, much worse off if
he continues to ignore this problem.

If the system is identifying cross-linked files, it's telling you that you
have some form of filesystem corruption. It's important that you let the
system fix what it can. It's also important to realize that some files
may be damaged beyond repair. The repair process only works to get the
filesystem repaired and properly layed out. Once the filesystem is in a
known good state, it's still possible to have files which remained
damaged. Worse, the process of repairing the filesystem can actually
damage some files. The details and extent of any possible damage and the
degree at which that damage can be repaired greatly depends on the nature
of the filesystem damage and the types of file activity that has been done
post-damage.

If possible, he REALLY needs to convert his filesystem to NTFS. NTFS is
much, much better than FAT. FAT is used by anyone that is begging to
suffer from filesystem corruption. FAT also suffers from very, very long
consistency checks. NTFS is a journaled filesystem, which means it always
attempts to keep the filesystem in good order without requiring a fsck to
be done on it. At worst, in bad situations, NTFS may still be checked but
the speed is mucho, mucho faster than the checks required for FAT. Best
of all, if the drive is very large and he converts to NTFS, he should gain
a fair amount of additional drive space back for actual file use. FAT is
horribly wasteful of allocated file space.

Hope this helps!

Cheers!


References:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p...convertfat.asp