Quite a few times now teachers have been putting their XP friendly usb pen drives into Vista machines at home. and get "Do you want to scan and fix" message pop up. There is a second option to continue without checking on the message window, but most people think they are doing the right thing by proceeding and letting Vista mangle the usb drive while fixing, ironically "encountering no errors it the process"
It seems that the problem lies with pen drives that have plain FAT file systems, it doesn't seem to happen with any drive with FAT32, but I'm happy to be proved wrong?
What I would like to know, has anybody got a way of stopping Vista offering to check and break FAT partitioned pen drives when they are plugged in?
It's nothing to do with XP. This is a Vista feature. If you *ever* remove a usb device without doing the 'safely remove hardware' thing, Vista will remember and prompt you to 'scan and fix' it, even if there's nothing wrong with it.
Once you have 'scan and fix'd it Vista will stop bugging you, until you remove the device again 'unsafely'.
I see your point Geoff, but it's not quite happening like that, even when the pen drive is being removed correctly, when the drive has a FAT file system not a FAT32, it wants to check the file system, but then wipes the data on the pendrive, or if not that somehow it stops allocating the pendrive a drive letter, which can't then be fixed in disk management.
I didn't think FAT16 was supported on Vista any more?
Well it does to a small degree - according to this article:Originally Posted by Geoff
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Window....mspx?mfr=true
Windows Vista provides support for Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me file systems, including FAT16 and FAT32 file systems.
Not sure on the USB sticks though.... If it can see other FAT16 partitions then it should see FAT16 USB sticks.....?
I'll try it later on my VISTA setup... [ 'cos I'm bored... ]
Of course it might be a bug as well. :P
Or 'feature' . . . . .
Just found this suggestion, not tried it yet though, but it sounds feasible.
when attaching a storage device (iPod, camera memory card, etc) to a Vista computer that was formatted with FAT32 under XP, you will be greeted with a disturbing dialog box saying that Vista would like to "fix" whatever device you've just connected.
Uh, don't click the "fix" button.
What is going on is that there is an archival bit on the hard drive or device you've just connected that Vista needs to have reset. You can do this quickly (and harmlessly) with the following command line:
chkdsk (iPod or other device drive letter): /f
Done. You'll never see the "Scan & Fix" dialog for that device again.
Well, that has certainly stopped my Vista computer nagging me each time my pen drive goes in, although I am yet to try and boot a PC off it - hopefully it hasn't "fixed" that...
I did that a while back, and then the message crept back again - I think after I plugged the pen drive into an XP computer.
As far as I know there isn't a difference between FAT or FAT16 and FAT32, apart from the obvious that FAT only supports upto 2GB partitions, whereas FAT32 is something like 64GB, possibly more?
If you're finding that it's still FAT that is causing the problem, you can format flash memory sticks smaller than 2GB in FAT32. You could also try NTFS and see if this proves any better!
If all else fails, you'll just have to educate your users how to remove flash memory sticks properly, but in saying that, I am guilty myself. I never disconnect properly in XP.
Just tried the chkdsk /F, but believe the message will continue to reappear to as soon as I've rebooted Vista.
I think I may know a workaround: Uninstall Vista and switch back to XP.
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