How do I resolve errors (in reference to Mathematica) when using ScanDisk?

These comments are only relevant to Windows 95.

ScanDisk is a DOS program, which means it doesn't fully support the extended filename paths of Windows 95.

If you run ScanDisk in the suggested mode (namely the mode where it automatically fixes errors), it will recognize the long paths as legal Windows 95 names and not find any errors. If you switch ScanDisk to the mode where it asks you about errors before fixing them, it will show you the directories that are too deep to be used and then ask you to fix them by deleting them and/or moving them out of the way. As a consequence, simply running ScanDisk in this verbose mode will also report errors with your disk.

It should be understood that this is not a problem with Mathematica, but is instead a limitation of the ScanDisk program included with Windows 95. Any application installed that creates a large number of subdirectories (that exceed DOS's old 66 character limit) will also have this problem. One possible workaround is to use shorter pathnames than Mathematica's defaults.

• When you installed Mathematica, you were prompted with a default installation directory. You can specify a different, shorter directory. See the following page for more information.

  http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/windows/general/installdir.html

• When Mathematica is started, it uses C:\Program Files\Common Files\Mathematica as the folder to save preferences. You can specify a different, shorter directory for the preferences. See the following page for more information.

  http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/windows/general/prefsdir.html

Note that the DriveSpace application will have a similar problem.

http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/windows/general/drivespace.html

Questions or comments? Send email to support@wolfram.com.