PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: alphafalcon on July 27, 2003, 16:06
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Hey guys, Could you help me enable to scandisk to my drive C..Whenever i tried to scandisk my drive C. theres a message that says............"Scandisk cannot continue because a program such as a disk utility has locked this drive. CLose the program or wait for it to finish. Then restart Scandisk."..........i really needed some help here :-[
my oem is windows me..
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Hi alphafalcon :welcome:
I have seen this problem a few times on Windows 98. The solution I've used is to run Scandisk in Safe Mode.
To get to Safe Mode, restart your PC and just before the PC says Starting Windows Millennium Edition, press F8 a few times. This should make a menu appear from which you can select Safe Mode.
Once Safe Mode Windows loads, you should be able to run Scandisk without any problems.
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Try restarting in safe mode and running it in there Alphafalcon :-*
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Beat me by seconds Adept :doggie:
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And I was far more informative too Sandra :P :banana:
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Thats because youre a man and talk too much,whereas I was clear and precise and to the point :P
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Thats because youre a man and talk too much
Do the words pot, kettle and black mean anything to you Sandra :brick: ;D ;D
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ive tried the safe mode... and enabling the scandisk to drive C but its not working :(..the same message appears..
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Do you have Norton System Works running?
Apparently it has a background disk defragmenter program which can cause similar behaviour.
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yes adept.. i have norton system works..how can i solve this problem?
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Thats awkward :(
Have you got a disk management utility which you used to make your PC see a larger drive than the BIOS would originally "see" ?
I fitted a 40 gig drive in my 450 pc once and it wouldnt recognise it until I flashed the bios.
Prior to flashing the bios I overcame the problem with Seagates disk management utility which then caused problems with some programs at a later date that were only resolved by flashing the bios and then wiping the drive to get rid of the seagate utility.
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Why not run scandisk in dos mode, then there's nothing to conflict with it.
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I hope it's not Norton Systemworks 2000 alphafalcon :o
See this Microsoft Knowledgebase (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;259155) article.
Mustapha: Alpha can't run in DOS mode, Windows ME doesn't have one unfortunately :(
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Can you not boot to dos with a 98 boot disk Adept then run scandisk from C prompt?
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Dammit Sandra you beat me to it. :(
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Can you not boot to dos with a 98 boot disk Adept then run scandisk from C prompt?
Well yes, but there isn't much point - the DOS scandisk is only a cut-down version of the full Windows Scandisk and cannot fix certain problems.
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i have norton system works 2003 adept
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Dammit Sandra you beat me to it. :(
My doggie is faster than your camel Mustapha :doggie:
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I've searched Microsoft's and Symantec's knowledgebases and cannot find a solution to this problem.
Is there maybe a way of disabling SystemWorks when you want to do a Scandisk?
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I found this on MS knowledge base :
SYMPTOMS
When you attempt to run ScanDisk in Windows Millennium Edition (Me), you may receive the following error message:
ScanDisk cannot check this drive now because the disk is not properly formatted, or a program such as a disk utility has locked it. Format the disk or wait for the utility to finish, and then restart ScanDisk.
CAUSE
This issue occurs if the Norton Speed Disk utility is running. When the Speed Disk utility is running, it blocks the use of ScanDisk. Speed Disk is installed when you install Norton SystemWorks 2000.
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Maybe you should uninstall System works then run scandisk and reinstall it to get around this problem or uninstall the speed disk part if that is possible with the add/remove and modify bit :doggie:
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maybe if i uninstall my norton system works 2003 ...i should be able to scandisk my drive c...then i should try it.. :-\ by the way i have drive d and e and theres no problem at all
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Is there not an option in Norton to tell it which drive to run speed disk on?
If there is,seeing as you have scanned D and E already change it to check E and try scanning C again :doggie:
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I have just looked at the speed disk options on my version which is on Norton Utilites and it has options to select which drive to use speed disk on,also there is a schedule setting,so if you enable the schedule and specify a stop time then that may allow you to run scandisk without uninstalling norton :doggie:
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Theres an option in norton which drive to scandisk....i tried to scandisk the drive e and then d and it works..but on drive c..no unable to scan coz of unknown disk utility is using it.. the message said.
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We have fixated on it being the speed disk that is causing the problem.
Maybe its some other utility such as the seagate disk manager utility I mentioned before.
To try and confirm that it is the speed disk thats causing the problem I would set it going on D or E and try scanddisk on that drive at the same time and see if you get the same error message or if it names speed disk as the problem then we would know whether we are definitely looking for another problem or not :doggie:
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I just had another idea :)
Can you do selective start up and untick System Works in there then try running scandisk either in windows or in safe mode again :doggie:
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Sandra thanks for the help.....ill try all ur suggestion.. ;)
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That just what I was going to say Sandra. You must be able to disable Norton's toys from starting up, AlphaFalcon, by opening System Works and going into the Options screens. Un-tick everything that looks like it starts up with Windows, then reboot and try scandisc again. Obviously Sandra's suggestion should work just as well, and might be easier.
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Not certain if its the same on ME but on XP If you right click on C: in MY computer and select Properties/Tools, then error checking that will check your drive at the next bootup if it can not do it there and then, if you have Norton installed the select Norton/Disk Doctor and check now.
You can always boot into dos and try to run chkdisk
Brian ;D
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You can always boot into dos and try to run chkdisk
Blimey, chkdsk! I haven't used that since my Windows 3.1 days!
I'm going slightly off-topic, but can anyone tell me what the difference is between chkdisk and scandisk?
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Windows 3.1. Happy days. When will they bring it back?
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Just a simple suggestion which I use. I Control,Alt Delete and click end task for all the rubbish that's going on in the backround, then use scandisk. :)
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Windows 3.1. Happy days. When will they bring it back?
Lol, Clive. The first PC I had was a 486, 80MB HD (which seemed massive not ten years ago) and 16MB RAM. I bought it from an overseas student who was returning home to Malaysia. I had Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, Microsoft Works and Netscape Navigator 3.0 on it, plus three years Degree coursework, and it still had over 50MBs free!
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@chorleydave
Chkdsk is a utility which checks the computers hard disk drives status for any cross-linked or any additional errors with the hard disk drive.
MS-DOS versions 2.x - 4.x used chkdsk.com
MS-DOS versions 5.x and beyond used chkdsk.exe.
Today it is recommended that you run Scandisk as it is a much more reliable and safe utility then chkdsk.
This program only runs in DOS
Microsoft ScanDisk is a program which is a disk analysis and repair tool used to check a drive for errors and correct any problems that it finds (new with DOS Version 6.2).
The ScanDisk program checks and fixes the problems in the following areas:
File allocation table (FAT)
File system structure (lost clusters, crosslinked files)
Directory tree structure
Physical surface of the drive (bad clusters)
DoubleSpace volume header (MDBPB)
DoubleSpace volume file structure (MDFAT)
DoubleSpace compression structure
DoubleSpace volume signatures
MS-DOS boot sector
ScanDisk can be used to check for errors on the following types of drives:
Hard drives
DoubleSpace drives
Floppy disk drives
RAM drives
Memory cards
The ScanDisk program cannot be used with CD-ROM drives, network drives, drives created by using the ASSIGN, SUBST, or JOIN commands, and drives created by using INTERLINK.
You cannot run ScanDisk when other programs are running. Also, you cannot use ScanDisk to repair disk errors if you start it from another program, or when Microsoft Windows or MS-DOS Task Swapper are running. However, you can check your disk without fixing errors by using ScanDisk with the /CHECKONLY option.
Brian ;D
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(https://www.pc-pals.com/smf/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.apax34.dsl.pipex.com%2Fsmileys%2Fyeahthat.gif&hash=e36fe6f073bce0b242a1a4fcd180f4e82a1d2c3a) ;) ;D
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Thanks, Brian.
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A good program that will run from a floppy disk and sort out problems is PC Check, PM me for details
Brian ;D