Scan disk

L

Lorraine

Registered User
Messages
58
My desktop won't scan; keeps restarting and then tells me that I must close windows programmes that are writing to the hard drive! what would these be, I closed down the fire wall, avg, and what else can I do???

Thanks for help.


(Its windows ME os I use)
 
The OP is referring to the Scandisk utility that checks the hard disk for errors. It sometimes runs automatically after a crash.

The problem is that some program is running in the background and writing to the hard disk, which prevents Scandisk from doing its thing. You were on the right track when you closed down the firewall and antivirus, but it's something else.

Method 1

  • Restart in Safe Mode. That'll prevent almost all programs from loading in the bakground.
  • Click Start, select Run and then type scandisk <return>.

Method 2

  • Even without a restart in safe mode, you can safely turn off every program running in ME except for "explorer" and "systray":
  • Ctrl + Alt + Del will bring up the close program dialog.
  • Select every entry in turn, except for "explorer" and "systray" and close the running programs one by one.
  • Then run scandisk with the Start > Run method as before

Either way, once you get it running without any background programs Scandisk should run happily until the full disk is checked, as long as its not interrupted or it doesn't hit a major disk error.

If Scandisk seems to hang at a certain point, let it run on for a while more. It sometimes manages to figure out that it's hit a bad section of the disk, and either fix it, or "cordon it off", marking the affected section as unusable for future programs. If this happens more than once or twice it can be a sign that the hard disk is reaching the end of its days, so it's prudent to backup important files to another medium.
 
lorraine
this happened to me a while back .this problem was only on one partition rest scanned perfectly .did same as you ,same operating system
scandisk is the program that is running and writing to disk
went into scandisk advanced options and switched off it's ability to write to the disk, problem solved. if this was the correct thing to do (problems down the line) i dont know it worked for me anyone else like to comment
is this some sort of virus ,and if so why did it not affect all the partitions?
 
did the job in safe mode (scan disk that is) then was able to defrag, computer is running much faster now, thanks for help.
 
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