Recently, I've been loading scandisk and defrag a lot more often on my computer to ensure everything's running properly. I would set it up and go to sleep and shut the computer down when I wake up. The last two times I ran scandisk, the computer has popped up a message saying that scandisk had started 10 times over because something else in windows is running.. I shut down everything (with ctrl+alt+del) and left only systray and explorer open, and still the same problem.. My brother said to run scandisk in safe mode, but will that help for the future?
Ed

 

disable your screen saver

 

Better yet, disable you anti-virus software.

 

I ran it in safe mode over night and still had the same problem when I woke this morning...Everything is disabled when I am in safe mode. the only thing running is "explorer".
Ed

 

I had the same problem also, ended up going in and shutting down a bunch of programs that were running on my task bar and also try disconnecting your broadband cable input.

 

I agree.. it might be the cable connection.

 

I'll try that... I have DSL, BTW....Umm I have been able to run scandisk successfully even with the lines plugged in though. Remember, I was in safe mode and nothing was loading, just explorer..
Ed

 

Use Win2k.

Just kidding. Stupid Win9x scandisk has no idea how to shut off disk I/O when it's scanning. Can you just start up in DOS command prompt mode and scandisk from there?

 

Try running it from the command line...

Use chkdsk, or scandisk. I use win2k so I can't remember if chkdsk has the option to run on a disk upon the next reboot like in win2k.

 

I can run scan disk from dos, but it wouldn't be the thorough scan disk...it's a quickie...I wanna thoroughly check and correct any errors..
Ed

 

I can't say for sure, but I believe if you type in scandisk /? it will have other parameters such as full scanning of the disk. It could be something like scandisk -f for example. I don't have windows 95/98/ME so I can't test it. If you are running windows 98/ME you can even make a batch file that runs scandisk (assuming it has additional paramaters to do a full scan) and have the task scheduler run this every night at say 8:00 PM or when ever is good for you. And in the batch file, make it dump the results to a text file, for example.

make file:
scan.bat (or whatever you want to call it)

put this inside,

rem ************

echo off
scandisk c: -F >> results.txt

rem scandisk d: -F >> results.txt
rem scandisk e: -F >> results.txt
rem scandisk f: -F >> results.txt
rem scandisk g: -F >> results.txt

date /T >> results.txt
echo end of scandisk

rem ************

I'm not sure if it's -F or not, so type in scandisk /? or scandisk -help to list the usage for this program. then replace the -F I wrote above with the propper command.

Then, save this info into a batch file and schedule a task to run every night. Then all you have to do is look at the results.txt file in the morning and it will have the date and time when it was run. If you want to go further, I can have the text file compressed so it doesn't grow too large. All you would have to do is download a pkzip program and have it zip and rename the file. Let me know if this helps any.

 

well... here are few things u can try...

1. Make sure u are not connected to the internet.
2. Turn off POWER SAVING in controll panel.
- make sure it's NEVER for HD shutdown, computer shutdown...etc.
3. No screen saver.

this after those 3 steps, it still doesn't work.
do this.
boot into dos mode. (press f8 when it says starting windows)
then choose command prompt or osmething.
run SCANDISK.
if it's successfully ran, then boot into windows, repeat step 1-3 and run scandisk again..


I dunno. Shouldn't be a cable connection problem. It's just something is accessing ur HD while scandisk is running. Like internet connections would recieve a ping or sends a ping to keep thte connections alive. or while scanning HD, ur HD goes into sleep. (power saving.)
i say... just sit there while the scan disk is working and move ur mouse once in a while.... Scandisk should be fast.. like 5 min max if u have a HUGE drive.

 

I sincerely doubt it is the interent unless you re running a server of some type. Even if you have 1000 people pinging you from the outside world, this creates zero hard drive activity unless it is associated with file transfers such as an http server an ftp server, napster etc. The scan disk he is talking about riceboy_TL is not the 5minute one, it's the full disk scan where it checks everything, not just file structure. It goes out and does a read/write to each cluster to make sure every part of the drive is accessible. (takes about an hour or more depending on the size of the drive)

I would check to see if you have DMA enabled to your drives, this may help if it is not. (it will also make your drive about 2x as fast)

To enable DMA (i'm winging it I don't have 98 anymore) right click on "my computer" and select properties. Then go to device manager. Next, select the "disk drives" section and open up the property to your hard drive(s) Go through the tabs and look for a check box that says "enable DMA". once you do this it will ask you to reboot. Then try scandisk...

DC

 

Handruin, I have DMA enabled from the beginning... I'm going to reboot now and run scandisk in safe mode and go thru control panel power management and select to keep everything on and see what happens... I'll reply shortly..
Ed

 

IT DIDN'T FRIKKIN WORK!!!!!!!!!
ED

 

Ok umm, do you have a CD-R drive? Are you running adaptec's easy cd creator software? Have you installed any kind of CD-R software recently? Anything with ASPI get installed? I'm trying to think of what else may intereupt the eide bus...(or are you running SCSi devices) Anything external attached? (scanner, zip drive, etc.)

Have you tried the command line scandisk with options? (sorry, not trying to harp on this, but it may work.)

Can you list in detail everything you know about that computer...how much ram do you have? Is your swap file getting hit often? Try defraging the drive first... (not sure this will help, but hey, what the hell) What OS is it?

 

I have a CDR drive, yes, it's internal. Remember, I'm running scandisk in safe mode. The only thing operating is "Explorer" and nothing else. Everything else is disabled on startup in safe mode(yes, I tried in regular mode and same problem). Thing is, I was able to do it no problem like a month ago..all of a sudden, this..

I didn't try running scan disk thru dos.. I'll try it soon..

I have a DELL Dimension 4100 P3 700, 128 megs of ram( i coulda sworn I upgraded to 256..guess not). I have a CDROM and a CDR drive, 20 gig hd. W98 OS.. I don't think defragging would work(generally you run scandisk before defrag, which is my method), but i'll try that too..... up until about a month ago, I would run a thorough Scandisk and Defrag every 2-4 weeks and I never had any problems...
Ed

 

pre Win load, DOS scandisk (use hotkey.. F8, i forget).. or boot-up disk - scandisk

the same thing was happening to me, but then I realized what the prob was - The 5 minute refresh of my Microsoft Investor Ticker on my desktop.

I agree, if you unplug the broadband connect, turn off screen saver, AV prog.. you should be fine.

but scandisk sucks. get norton utilities - you'll never go back.

 

BTW, I figured I would give it a shot before I went to sleep and run scandisk by restarting and pushing F8 to start with a Dos Prompt.. It enabled me to run the full scandisk(I didn't know I can run the thorough scan thru dos)...I went to sleep, it said it would take like 3 and a half hours to do, so I'm pretty sure it's the one I wanted..I woke up this morning, lo and behold, it scanned everything perfectly(without any errors)...I set up defrag and went out, just got back in and everything's perfect.... I'll probably try running scandisk again in a week or so just to see if I still have the same problem running it thru windows...thanks for everyone's help!
Ed