Q As you know, if Windows 95 is not shut down properly it runs Scandisk at the next startup. After I uninstalled Helix Software's Nuts & Bolts, Windows displayed a message at startup saying "Scandisk.exe could not be found". After reading that message I quickly got out my rescue disk and copied scandisk.exe to three places: c:\, c:\windows, and c:\windows\system but the message still appears. Can you tell me the solution to this problem?

A In common with other system maintenance software, the Nuts & Bolts package makes sweeping changes to your Windows setup when it is installed. A decent uninstall routine should reverse all these changes, but the Nuts & Bolts uninstaller leaves something to be desired.

As David discovered, one of the application's more radical changes is to substitute its own Disk Minder utility for Windows 95's Scandisk. The uninstaller removes Disk Minder, but does not reinstate Scandisk as the system's default disk scanner. Which leaves Windows confused and unable to locate scandisk.exe, even if you leave multiple copies of it strewn across your system.

Network Associates (www.nai.com), who acquired the Nuts & Bolts product earlier this year, suggest a couple of fixes. The first option is to reinstall Nuts & Bolts: choose StartûProgramsûNuts & BoltsûEZSetup and select the System tab. Then change the name of the disk scanner from Disk Minder to Scandisk. Once you have closed the dialogue box, the problem should be solved. This is the only fix that will work for users of Windows 95A (the earliest version of Windows 95) and Windows 98.

If you were using an evaluation copy of Nuts & Bolts, and uninstalled it because it expired, you may not be able to reinstall. If that's your situation, all is not lost. You can download a patch file (scandisk.scr) from ftp.helixsoftware.com/pub/techsupp/n&b/other/scandisk.scr and feed it to the Windows Debug utility. This is how you do it:

1. Copy scandisk.scr to your Windows folder (probably c:\windows).

2. Open a DOS prompt (StartûProgramsûCommand Prompt).

If necessary, change to the Windows folder: type cd c:\windows and press <Enter>.

3. Type debug win.com < scandisk.scr and press <Enter>.

If you are interested in how this file works, you can open it in a text editor and view the debug commands.