Thread: Compact Flash CF Freezes at XP Boot Screen

I got it to work! Don't quite know how but I think it's because this time I did'nt use the usb adapter to copy the files. However I did try it in another computer and could not get any picture (dodgy monitor setup) but any way, when I put the cf back in my CarPC. It started to boot then did a disk error check found a bunch of errors:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is FAT32.


One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
Volume Serial Number is 45C9-7009
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 128 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 129 ....

......links in lost chain at cluster 178 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 179 corrected.
Lost chain cross-linked at cluster 180. Orphan truncated.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 181 corrected.
Lost chain cross-linked at cluster 182. Orphan truncated.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 183 corr........

..... links in lost chain at cluster 206 corrected.
Lost chain cross-linked at cluster 207. Orphan truncated.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 208 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 209 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 255 corrected.
Convert lost chains to files (Y/N)? Yes
339968 bytes in 83 recovered files.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

2052079616 bytes total disk space.
278421504 bytes in 260 hidden files.
2187264 bytes in 504 folders.
477573120 bytes in 4600 files.
1293893632 bytes available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
500996 total allocation units on disk.
315892 allocation units available on disk.


I think this was caused by having to pull the power cord on the psu of the other computer I tested it in.

Just to make sure - Say the card has a max of 10 million writes. I take it that is per cell? So if I copy 10 million small files to my CF card and fill it then after that it's not going to fail? But if I write one file to the same part of the card 10 million times, then it'll fail.
Is this right?

Why the hell won't XCOPY work in DOS 6.22. It's on the disc but just says:
"Command or filename invalid"

I want to just copy the XP install from HD to CF using
XCOPY D:\ C:\ /S/E/H

Wish the computer would just give me a quick slap to let me know I forgot to click "set" when changing to no paging file.

After all this it's not really the white knuckle ride I was expecting.
But what can expect for £13.

with a better CF card it'll boot much quicker

What's your read speed?
I did buy a 2GB USB drive with samsung mem 153X but I did'nt realise how old my via MB is. Only v1.1 USB and does not seem to want to boot from usb at all.

don't remember the official read speeds off-hand, but my Extreme I would boot in under 20 seconds if I remember correctly. This was from power-on to idling desktop on a mildly slimmed XP SP2 OS.

Would a 3.5" SCSI be quicker? I have one laying around but no adapter.

my Extreme I would beat my 2.5" 4200RPM drive when booting up no problem. but most likely yes the desktop scsi drive will be faster. don't go for (current) flash drives purely for speed, because it'll either just match or be slightly slower than a desktop drive (depending on what you're doing). flash is best for size/power/reliability reasons. new flash solutions will do all that and even be faster. i'm really looking forward to getting m-system's new CF drive which may finally be the device i've been looking for.

I'm having the same issue, but I have a real card. I think it may be due to the way the files were copied over. I used xcopy as well... What is the best method to copy the files over?