The Hindu Business Line : String of error messages

I have had trouble shutting down my system. For some time now, an error message has been popping up during shutdown. More recently, though, I get different error messages when any key is pressed as prompted in the original error message. These are the messages:

First message:

"A fatal exception OE has occurred at 0028:C0031C7A. The current application will be terminated.* Press any key to terminate current application.* Press CTRL+ALT+DEL again to restart your computer You will lose any unsaved information in all applications. Press any key to continue."

When any key is pressed, the system hangs without shutting down. Of late, when any key is pressed after the above error message, another message crops up as given below:

The second message is: "An exception OE has occured at 0028:C00AA8A in VxD v FAT (01) + 0000 8AB2. This was called from 0028. C005A1A3 in VxD VTDAPI(01) + 000000 C3. It may be possible to continue normally."

When ctrl+alt+del is pressed as prompted, another another error message is displayed as given below:

"A fatal exception OE has occured at 0028. C004 AA8A in VxD VFAT ( 01)+00008AB2. The current application will be terminated"

After this, the system again hangs and the power needs to be switched off to shut down the system.

Please suggest a solution. P. Gangadhara Rao

This is a problem Microsoft has acknowledged and issued a patch for. You need to download and install it to solve the problem. You can download it from this URL:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;256015&sd=tech,

There is also a site where you can find the reasons and solutions to most of the 0E and 0D errors (blue screen errors) occurring in Win 95 and Win 98. Please look up http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315854/EN-US/

Trouble while defragging drive

I use an Intel P4 system with 1.8 GHz,128 Mb RAM, 40 GB HDD, with 4 partitions, with Windows 98 SE as OS, with McAfee Virus S/W and TouchTel DSL Internet connection.

Defragging the C drive (50 per cent full of programs and data) is the problem. Defragging the other partitions mainly used for data is done without hitch. Before the defrag task, I do the scan disk for C drive with "Standard Test" with "automatic error fixing" options. After jumping between " checking folders" and "checking allocation tables" a couple of times, the following message comes up: "ScanDisk has restarted 10 times because Windows or another program has been writing to this drive. Quitting some running programs may enable ScanDisk to finish sooner."

How do I find out which programs are running and writing to the disk & how do I deactivate them before the ScanDisk and Defrag processes?

D.V. Subramanian

The message you got is exactly what is happening. There might be some programs running either in the background or in the task bar which are continuously reading and writing to the C: drive, which might cause trouble for the disk scan programs. You will have to find and quit any such program and then run the scan util. You can see the list of programs which start when Windows starts, by running `msconfig.exe'. To run this, please go to Start Menu -{gt} Run and type in msconfig and press enter. In the dialog, go to the startup tab and uncheck the programs you suspect to be running at the background. You can switch them back when the scan is over. Logging programs, schedule managers, file monitoring programs and the like are some kinds of programs you should choose to disable temporarily.

There is one other wayto solve this problem. You can run the scan in `Safe Mode' because in this mode, only the bare minimum files required for Windows to operate are loaded. Other drivers and start-up programs are not loaded. To start the system in safe mode, keep pressing the F8 Function key when the system starts and in the menu that appears select the Safe Mode option.

Solutions by G. Rajah

Please e-mail us at eworld@thehindu.co.in

if you have queries on computer usage or if you find an interesting way of using a computer.

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