PCTech Forums

Scan disc never finishes for me, it just keeps restarting. I have Started up in Safe Mode and it still keeps restarting.

Any ideas what I can do?

Are you connected to an active internet connection?? If so unplug the cable before running scandisk. Are you running a surface scan as well?? Try running it without a surface scan. If no problems then run with it enabled. When was the last time you defragged?

My hard drives died quite recently (couple of months ago i think) and I had to reinstall windows. Since then, i've been unable to run scandisk or defrag.

What is surface scan? I cannot see that option.

what operating system are you runinng? (should have asked that before too!!) I've had issues when doing scandisks with harddrivew with bad sectors and the scandisk would restart durring the file check(forget which part of it). Ususally if you keeps messing up there is a problem with your hd.

Did you fdisk and reformat your hard drive before you re-installed your OS. Which is what 98?

This article applies to Windows 98

Many people have problems running ScanDisk and/or Defrag, with the program running 10% or 30% and then stalling. Often with a message that Windows is trying to write to the drive. To run ScanDisk/Defrag successfully:


Go to Start > Run and type msconfig in the Open box
On the General tab, uncheck all items listed under Selective startup (make sure that Selective startup is selected)
Hit apply and OK and restart Windows
This starts Windows with only the basics running; Insures nothing will interfere with ScanDisk and Defrag
Run ScanDisk and Defrag, when ready go into msconfig and select Normal startup and restart Windows
(If you use Windows 95, restart your system, when you see the Starting Windows 95... text on your screen, quickly press the F8 key. From the menu that follows, choose Safe mode, and run ScanDisk & Defrag. When ready, reboot.)

(Provided by Windows-Help.NET )