[Ham-Computers] RE: More misery!

[Hsu, Aaron (NBC Universal)]

Hi Ken,

You may not realize it, but there are *MANY* things running in the "background" in Windows.  With Win9x/ME, the Task Manager list may be empty, but there are quite a few system related tasks/services running as well as device drivers.  A disk write is what causes Scandisk to restart and any of these tasks can be writing something to the disk.

As some have mentioned, killing all the tasks in the Task Manager or starting in "Safe Mode" may help.  However, it's impossible to kill all background tasks in Windows as many are required for Windows to run.

If you're using Win9x, an alternative to running Scandisk in Windows is to run it in the underlying DOS layer by booting to "Command prompt only".  This is one of the options on the Windows Startup Menu when you press <F8> when Windows is starting up.  When you select "Command prompt only", it boots straight into DOS without loading the Win9x GUI.  Once you're at the C:\ prompt, type "SCANDISK" and press <Enter>.  Since DOS is a single-tasking OS, SCANDISK will be the only thing running and should complete without any interruptions (yes, you can run background tasks in DOS, but since the advent of Win95, most people don't have these types of shells/managers).  The Command-prompt based version of SCANDISK is just as thorough as the GUI based version, just not as "pretty".

BTW, you probably won't have mouse support while in Command-prompt only mode.  You could try to load a mouse driver by typing "mouse", then pressing <Enter>, but you'll most likely need to navigate by keyboard.  Pay attention in the Scandisk app for the *bold* letters in white - these are the single-key shortcuts to select that function.

Also, I don't think "Command prompt only" is available in WinME - never touched that piece of, ahem, software - perhaps someone else can confirm this?


To follow-up on another suggestion, "Process Explorer" is by SysInternals, which is now owned by Microsoft.  You can still get to the website via it's original URL, http://www.sysinternals.com (which re-directs to a Microsoft site).  You'll find Process Explorer under "Process Utilities".  There are also many other *great* SysInternals utilities (such as Regmon, Filemon, and the powerful PsExec utility), but be careful as some of these utils can also cause problems if you're not careful.

Let us know how it goes with the Command-prompt version of SCANDISK.

73,

  - Aaron, NN6O



-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 5:09 PM
Subject: [Ham-Computers] More misery!

Last report!

Trying to run ScanDisk, after quite some time this comes up:

"ScanDisk has restarted 10 times because Windows or another
program has been writing to this drive. Quitting some running
programs may enable ScanDisk to finish sooner. Do you want to
continue recieving this warning?"

Well, there was no other program running that I am aware of.
This happens also when I try to run "ScanDisk".

If anyone has an explanation, elinghten me please!

Does anyone have a stick of dynamite handy? I'm tempted!

Ken   N5CM