I'm still using my 98SE system for the time being. Last night my system crashed and I hit the reset button like I've done many times in the past. I left the room to go make something to eat and when I got back, ScanDisk was only at 31%. I canceled it and when Windows booted, the system tray was empty and the icons on my Desktop were just generic program icons.

I figured that it was just a fluke and rebooted. ScanDisk came up again, but this time it scanned my secondary drive. When the system booted up the same way, I discovered that it had deleted the long filenames for a good portion of my boot drive. All the files are there, but now they have names like INTER~1.EXE. Then I checked my secondary drive and all but two files have been renamed to DOS filenames.

I thought that maybe a problem with my Windows installation was preventing me from seeing the LFNs, so I put the drive in another system, but the names were still screwed up. Obviously, it deleted the LFN information from the drive. However since most information isn't actually erased, just marked as unused, I'm hoping that there's some utility that can scan the drive and restore the long filenames.

The drive basically only has downloaded data files on it, so I CAN manually rename them if necessary, but if it's at all possible, I'd like to be able to restore the original names. Or even if there was some way to just see the original names and I could figure out which files are which.

Of course I'm probably going to have to re-install my boot drive from scratch, since a good portion of it is screwed up. At least it didn't get to the downloaded files I had in a sub-directory. Luckily it got bogged down going through the 50,000+ files in the Windows directory first. I'm amazed that IE still works.

Frankly, out of all the problems I thought I might encounter, having ScanDisk just decide to delete the LFN info was something I never even considered. How the hell would anyone think having it do that would be useful???

If anyone knows any way to recover the long filenames, please let me know ASAP!

Thanks.

This might help: http://antivirus.about.com/od/...nbkres.htm

I haven't used Win98 in a very long time, so I can't confirm if it works or not.
Good luck.
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Thanks, but that doesn't help. The System File Checker can only check files that have been previously scanned,

I need some type of recovery software that can scan the disk and find the deleted long filename information.

It doesn't even have to run in 98. I can hook the drive to a differe system to scan it.

Somebody please tell me that such a program exists. I really don't want to try and rename several hundred files manually. Not to mention that for many of them, I have no idea what the original names actually were and would just be giving them generic names.

All my searches just find generic recover programs that restore deleted files, not fix the filenames.

Anyone?

Well, I've discovered two things;

First, as I suspected, the LFN information hasn't been erased. A freeware program called Disk Inspector can still see the long file names, so at least that's a start. I still haven't been able to find any utility that will restore them yet. I'm not sure if DI will do it or not. I've been a little afraid to try for fear of making things worse.

Second, apparently I inadvertantly caused this. The past couple of times ScanDisk has run, it's reported an invalid long file name problem on the secondary drive. It told me to run ScanDisk for Windows, but that didn't find any problems. Neither told me the name of the file in question. I Googled this and found a page recommending that you edit the ScanDisk INI file to remove the check for long file name problems. I read the explanation in the INI file and it said that when on, it checks for problems. Now that I've done more searching it seems that that's more of a switch that tells ScanDisk to royally f*** up the drive if set to off. Apparently some braindead moron at MS thought it would be a good idea to have it automatically rename all files to their DOS 8+3 counterparts! Even if there's a valid reason for such a function, why didn't the idiots put a warning in the INI file that it would do that. All it says is that it will check for LFN problems, not that turning it off will cause it to rename every file on your system! Idiots!

I know running the old DOS Scandisk on a Windows 9x machine does the same thing, because I've done it. I just liked the DOS one better. Until I did that...

I still haven't had any luck finding software to fix this. Disk Inspector won't 'restore' files that haven't been deleted. There's also no way to copy any of the text in the window. You can click on the names, but that's all. If you right-click and select Properties, it only shows the short names. Even the undelete option doesn't show the long names.

I briefly thought about deleting the files so that it could restore them, but that will only work for very small files. The drive is a fragmented FAT32 volume, which means that the files aren't stored in contiguous(sp?) blocks and when you delete a file, Windows erases the FAT table that shows where the file is stored. So the recovery software just guesses where the file should be based on where Windows would store it on a non-fragmented drive. Meaning, it usually just recovers garbage if the file is bigger than one cluster.

I wrote to the author of Disk Inspector and he said he didn't know of any software to restore the names. He said he could write a program to rename them to the long filenames, but that it would be expensive.

Just another example of MS's stupidity. I mean, not only is it stupid to include such a function if the user doesn't specifically ask it to do that, but to not include a warning in the ScanDisk.ini file that this will happen is just beyond incompetent!

Did Win98 have System Restore? I don't remember.
If it does you might try that. If not...

I also remember running dos scan disk back then, I ended up renaming a few thousand files on my data drive by hand, that is, after I reinstalled windows.

Lesson learned: BACKUP! BACKUP! BACKUP!
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Another chapter in the ongoing saga...

I managed to find a single program that can not only see the long filenames for all the files, but will also restore/copy those files to another drive. Of course, like everything, there's a catch; It can only do one file at a time! It's a 'console' application, so it looks like a DOS program. In fact, they have a DOS version, but it can't recover long filenames. Supposedly it creates a batch file that will rename them later. I haven't tried that because I'm using my new system, which doesn't have DOS, and on my old one, I don't have another hard drive I can use to recover the files to.

Anyway, I saw that the company that provides the free program has a 'pro' version for $50. I'd be willing to pay for it, but I downloaded the demo and it only shows the DOS names! How is it that a $50 program can't do what a 500K freeware program can?

The freeware one can process entire directories, but then it will include tons of deleted files as well, and I only want the existing files.

I'm going to give their support number a call in the morning. They have an email address, but I'd rather talk to an actual person. I tried the number now, but I guess they don't have 24 hour support.

I could use the freeware program, but it would take forever to recover all the files.

Stupid me; They're not open on the weekend...

I managed to devise a round-about way to restore all my personal files.

Disk Investigator showed me all the old names next to the new ones, but wouldn't let me do anything with them. A program called HyperSnapDX has a text capture option which can catpure that text to the clipboard. It also has an option to auto-scroll windows, but that never worked with DI.

I cut each screen's worth of filesnames in each directory appending each one, then I used a couple macros in a text editor to reformat the list into a batch file for renaming, and saved it to the appropriate directory on the backup drive. Then I copied over the files from that dir, double-clicked the BAT file and that dir full of files gets renamed back to their original names.

Not the most convenient method, but it sure beat having to rename each file individually. It's too slow and cumbersome to use on my boot drive though. So if I want to restore that system to working order, I'll need to re-install everything.

At least I have all my personal files restored.