ScanDisk Problem (1 Viewer)

[Robert Houghton]

My grandson has my old computer which is running Windows98. He has a problem that every time he boots up, the scandisk screen comes up because he didn't shut down properly. It goes to 17% completed and justs sits there doing nothing for hours. Reboot and the same thing happens, so he can't get into windows. I asked him how he shut off the machine the last time it was working, and he said that he selected the standby option by mistake, and when nothing happened he just turned off the machine manually. That's when all his problems started.I have used the Windows98 startup disk and tried to run the scandisk from there. It stops at 3%. I get no error messages from scandisk when it stops. The hard drive activity light is off.I don't believe the hard drive is bad, because I ran a fitness test, and it was good. I have googled this all kinds of ways and can't get the exact same problem. Usually if it halts, it should give you a message. When it does hang on the scandisk screen, the only way out is to restart the computer. Hit any keys on the keyboard, nothing. No virus, the computer has never been on the internet.

 

[Max Leung]

Is the hard drive almost full? It seems the less space on the hard drive, the longer scandisk takes (probably needs space for temporary buffers and stuff when fixing things).

There really isn't much you can do, although there should be a way to abort the scandisk operation. At least, there was with windows 2000 on a FAT16 filesystem.

This is why I love windows XP running NTFS...it will always boot, and do a "scandisk-like" operation only after you log in.

 

[Robert Houghton]

The hard drive is using less than 10G on a 60G drive. You should be able to get out of the scandisk screen, but no buttons will work on the exit screen. Have tried every key on the keyboard.

 

[Mary M S]

Have you defragged in the last months?

I ran into a similar issue when hand-deleting thousands of files. At one point a pop-up requested me to Run Scan Disc. Started scandisc which kept freezing at diffrent percents.

After two attempts it suddenly hit me, that even though I had run Defrag just a week prior. This was before my hugh deleting of files and cleaning up.
I prob. had files bits scattered willy nilly all over the HD, which ScanDisc did not like.

Ran defrag. Scandisc then ran to 100%.

 

[Max Leung]

Sounds like a good plan Mary. Hopefully that's all it is, a badly fragged hard drive!

 

[Bob Graz]

I would think you should be able to boot up in safe mode.

 

[Robert Houghton]

Can't boot up into safe mode because the next screen is the scandisk screen, which I can't get out of. I can't get past the scandisk screen, which means I can't get into Windows. I have run scandisk from the Windows98 disk, that one freezes at 3%. The freezes are consistently at the same spots, freezes no escape.

 

[Max Leung]

Have you tried leaving it alone overnight? It could just be taking a really REALLY long time...

I had a machine here at work that would take 30 minutes to do a scandisk...it has tens of thousands of little

 

[Mary M S]

Sorry, I don't remember exactly what I do in past glitches.

Prob a silly question, but instead of waiting till "windows did not shut down properly..checking drive" till you get to the loading screen we all normally hit the button to switch to DOS. Did you attempt holding Ctrl/Alt/Delete down BEFORE you hit the power up button on your computer. Or, holding down and repeatdly hitting F8, BEFORE the power button?

I think once - to get a startup disc to boot me into the the choice screen (start in safe/windows/ect). I had to place the startup disc in the drive BEFORE pushing the power button...then hit F2?? repeatedly until it kicked into that screen.

You want to go round Windows trying to run "Not shut down properly" and interupt that process any way you can, since it is freezing there.

If you can get to Dos, I assume there is a command to run Defrag from there (I've alway run that one from windows) -first thing I would do and empty all temp files from Dos. Another option used to check integrity of your mother board and CMOS, (if this unit is very old) to eliminate the possiblity of a failing board. If your hardware handy hook another harddrive into this PC to see if you can boot off this board.