OE may well have been running in the background when the system crashed last night - I don't remember. It usually runs in the background and I usually don't leave the PC on all night.
I'm using NTFS and did both disk check on reboot, and then rebooted to safe mode / command prompt and ran CHKDSK. As an old DOS fan (I still use a laptop running DOS) running CHKDSK is like visiting an old friend, but it also makes me wonder if there aren't better alternatives (in the DOS days scandisk and the Norton Utilities seemed much better than chkdsk, but I may just be associating programs by name and not actual level of functionality.)
FWIW - I do not think that any disk check on NTFS has ever found any problem - a fact that leave me wondering in the check programs do much good. I also associate NTFS with HPFS - which I believe is the antecedent of NTFS. I used HPFS for several years back before the MS empire dominated the universe - HPFS crashed and burned terribly on me more than a few times. (Part of the reason why I wound up back in Windows.) I'm sure NTFS is a significant improvement of the HPFS I used to use the Warp days, but still ...
- MCC
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Mark Cassino Photography
Kalamazoo, MI
www.markcassino.com
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Herb Chong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2005 7:57 PM
Subject: Re: MX OUtlook Express Question
are you running Windows 2K, XP, or some other version of Windows and was OE running when the system crashed? NTFS is very resistant to problems like this. if you are running a version of Windows that supports it, NTFS is more reliable than FAT32, although a touch slower sometimes. that's not to say that NTFS is able to deal with all likely situations, but it is better. an external USB/Firewire hard drive and something like Norton Ghost is a pretty cheap way to defend against things like this. i've been using redundant sets of external hard drives for backup for a few years now and i don't regret the move to them. they are cheaper than tapes if you factor in a speedy enough drive to make it worthwhile. since i moved to a 1.2 terabyte RAID 5 drive array, i have been copying all my CDs and DVDs back onto the array and throwing them out. instead, i keep multiple external hard drives backing up the array. burning multiple CDs and DVDs is cheaper, but much more hassle to organize physically. i have only about 200G of CDs and DVDs though, so that makes it easier.
Herb...
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Cassino" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2005 7:29 PM
Subject: Re: MX OUtlook Express Question
Good question on underlying problems. I've been burning a bunch of DVD's these last few days and last night I left the system on while ThumbsPlus cataloged a new DVD. When I got up this morning the system was off and would not turn on. I unplugged it, plugged it back in, and it started. I assumed it had over heated (the motherboard is designed to shut down if there is an overheat problem) and the usual cause of overheating is dust clogging the heat sink. So once it was up and running and seemed OK, I shut down again and used some canned air to blow out the heatsink.
