h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi - I really hope someone here can advise me......

A few weeks back I tried to run scandisk on my pc with Windows Me...

It seemed to start okay, but then displayed a message saying it had had to restart 10 times because another program was writing to the disk. This has happened every time I've tried to run scan disk ever since...there were definitely no programs running at the same time.

Because scan disk wouldn't work, defrag won't work either - last time I ran it it got to 57% done and then informed me I needed to scan disk first....

I thought I may have a virus so purchased McAfee Virus Scan Online and did a scan which showed I had 5 infected files....I followed the instructions to get rid of the files, tried scandisk again, but with the same result...

Now my CD burner/copier won't work properly - it starts to read or burn but then gives a variety of error messages.....I re-installed the software but to no avail.

Lots of other miscellaneous weirdness occuring with Windows explorer and other programs.....



I wonder if anyone has any ideas as to what the cause of all this could be and what I can do about it?

The trouble is that I use the computer a lot (especially the CD burner) because I co-run a small non-profit record label....and orders are waiting...

please help!

Hiya Candi! Answer on it's way... takes time to type...

Thank you!! Thank you!!

::waits most gratefully and patiently::

Stating the obvious, perhaps, but have you turned off your screen saver? Also, if you have MS Office installed, you may have "Find Fast" (a.k.a. "Content Indexer") enabled - it reads the contents of all the files on your drive, creating a master "search index", and only runs when you're not using the mouse or keyboard. If that's the case, run Office setup and disable "Find Fast" to see if that fixes it. Finally, something running in the background such as Seti@Home might be writing to the disk; stop any such apps too.

If you get the "Scandisk has restarted ten times" message, it's not a fatal error, just a warning that it may take some time. Just tell it not to show the message again, and leave it running overnight... Good luck.

Okay, here goes...


First up, scan disk.

Windows ME is notorious for having things running in the background that you've no idea about. I gave up looking to see what it was complaining about. When you get the message saying that it's restarted 10 times on that dialog box you get the option to no longer be notified of the alert things. It means that scandisk will carry on running even if it is interupted. Each time it's intterupted, it doesn't start from the beginning, but from where it left off. Thank deities for that at least. So, just set it running to the first message box, tell it you're no longer interested in it's messages and to carry on. Then leave it running over night. Following morning or night you should be able to run DeFrag.

As for Cd Burning...
When a cd is written it's written in one long sprial on the cd. You're computer reads information from the source, either a hard drive or another cd into a buffer, that's then written from the buffer onto the cd. If there's a problem from the buffer to the cd, you've got yourself a useless cd, or another coaster to your collection.
Things to check here... if you're copying from cd to cd, make sure they are on different IDE channels, in other words, on different cables inside the computer. Only so much information can flow along a cable at any time, and if it's going from cd along the cable to the buffer, it can't go along the cable to the cd-writer. Also, when you start a cd copying, leave the computer alone. If the memory is being used to run Solitaire, it can't be used on the buffer.
If you still get trouble, set up your software to write to the hard disk first, this eleminates some of the lag type stuff and helps limit coaster incrementation.

Funny problems like that sound like a virus resident in memory writing random information to random files, if you get any docs that don't look right then you know some curuption is going on. I've also had Hard disks that are on there way out do this kind of thing, they first write random data to the disk, scandisk will never compleat because of the new data and then a few days later you stat hearing noises were one of the heads has crashed and killed a secion of your disk, and it's all down hill from there on in.

let us know what you find out anyway, interesting thing windows.

-- DoctorMO --

If the thought doesn't make you gibber in terror, consider ditching Windows ME in favour of Windows XP - yes it's expensive, but it is actually better. Not that it's hard, given that ME was the worst version of Windows ever produced...

Even running Windows98, I seem to have got to the point where scandisk doesn't want to run unless I manually shut down all the background stuff.

To *try* and get Scandisk working, I suggest :
Firstly, stopping anything you may have running in the system tray (bottom-right corner of screen - right click the icons, and if a menu comes up with a close or exit option, pick it.

Second, try doing CRTL-ALT-DELETE, and killing off processes running there (select things out of the window, then choose 'end task'). If you kill off a vital system process, you'll have to restart your PC, so I suggest you start working down from the top of the list, making a note of the tasks you end, and if the machine seizes up after you kill off a particular task, don't try stopping that one in future.
Try running scandisk after stopping each task until it runs properly. When/if it *does* run OK, do CTRL-ALT-DEL again and make a note of which tasks were running when it worked so you'll know to kill off all the other ones right away the next time.


Regarding the CD writer, what software are you using, what messages are you getting, and have you recently changed the brand of blank disc you use?

Many thanks to you all

Peet - I do turn off screen saver when I use scandisk, defrag etc. I haven't got find fast installed, and don't know how to stop Seti@Home or other applications like it...

As for leaving scandisk running all night.....tried it and doesn't seem to make any difference...at the end of it still get the same message when I try to run defrag. But I'll try it again tonight, just in case.

Pastey - I will try writing to disk first, and try to figure out the IDE thing, but the weird thing is, it's been fine ever since I got the computer over a year ago - not a single wasted CDR - ever! So why all this all of a sudden?

DoctorMO - I thought I'd got rid of all the virus infections, is it possible that the virus scan software missed something?

MaW - I would love Windows XP - but have no money However, if I can track down what's going wrong here and that seems the best solution, I can save up for it, I suppose....

Anyway, thanks again to you all, I will post back here when I've tried the various suggestions and hassle you some more if they don't work
Nice to feel I'm not struggling completely alone and clueless!!

help from all angles!

Hi potholer - simulpost!

I am using Nero 5.5 - we have got some different CDs recently but it's doing the same thing with the old ones which never caused problems before

...error messages-
At first something along the lines of: read SCSI/IDE error
But then started to just seize up during the burn process itself...

I'll try that for scandisk...will copy down your instructions and try it tonight..

To make sure nothing else is running, but avoiding closing tasks manually, it may be worth trying a small program called Winsolo - free version at:

http://www.sonicspot.com/winsolo/winsolo.html

which is used to shut down all unnecessary processes except the one you want to run. It works for Win95/98, but I'm not sure about ME - given that ME is built on similar foundations to 98 I guess there's a good chance it might be OK, and the download is very small.

I used a version of it some time ago, and it did what it was supposed to do.

It sounds very much like there's something new running in the background which is causing this mess...

Candi, if there is a problem on the HDD which causes it to do retries when reading/writing the CD buffer that could give you the CD burning failures you're experiencing. Don't try to fix the CD problem until Scandisk runs all the way through without reporting errors - anything you change could just complicate things.

If you can, try to get the use of a copy of Spinrite 5 (you can buy it from http://grc.com) and let it check the whole drive surface. It's an excellent piece of software which is designed to fix surface errors ("hard" errors, as opposed to filesystem errors which Scandisk concentrates on...) Unlike Scandisk, it actually repairs damaged sectors, rather than just marking them as unusable. Recommended.

If you know the make of HDD then check the manufacturers website, I have a seagate and a ewestern digital and they both do disk checking software which boots from a floppy and not only checks the drives surface and media, but also the electronics of the drive. I had a problem with the sagate sometimes not starting up, this fixed it. It will tell you if the drive itself is beyond redemption and also tell you how to return it if it is still under warantee.

Very good

(although slightly worrying when you see the floppy boot up as PC-DOS (C) 1970-something!)

Well, I've tried your suggestion about closing programs and running scandisk again, Pastey. It doesn't work, I'm afraid. I know there's no point in leaving it going overnight because after turning off the "restarted 10 times" message it *did* start to scan- it did this for about 20 minutes, then I sat by it while it flitted from "checking file allocation folders" to "checking files and folders" for half an hour; every time it changed from one to the other the cursor briefly changed from arrow to hourglass and back....the hard drive meanwhile making a horrible sound like a wheezy old man!!

One bit of good news: the CD burner does work when I save the files into a temp folder first (though of course it takes longer), so the orders are safe for the moment...

Spinrite does sound very good, but now I'm confused...

With the way my computer's behaving recently, it looks like I am going to have to spend some money on this problem, but don't know whether to buy spinrite or back up everything I can while it's still possible and then get windows XP and start afresh...
but then I'd still have faulty drives, wouldn't I so I'd end up having to buy spinrite as well.....
or maybe there's another option..?

oh dear......any thoughts, anyone?

Sorry Ictoan, meant to ask you: these floppys you get from the manufacturer - do you have to pay for them? If so, how much, approx? Yet another option to consider......

Oh, and Potholer - I downloaded winsolo but when I tried to run it it crashed my computer spectacularly, couldn't even restart, had to reboot, so - no, I don't think Windows Me likes it!

If your hard drive is making a sound like a wheezy old man it may be dying. I would suggest you back up your important data (for me that's my MP3 collection, my e-mail files and my ICQ history - for you it will be different) just in case. Don't worry about backing up programs because you can always reinstall those from the original media.

If your hard drive kicks the bucket you've suddenly lost everything.

My last suggestion is that after you have backed up your data and made sure you haven't forgotten anything, you may want to format the drive and reinstall Windows. Make _sure_ you have someone around that knows what they are doing before you do this!! Especially make sure you have drivers for all your hardware before you start.

With Windows 98 I had to do this about every 3 months or so. With Windows 2000 I can get away with about a year. With Windows XP the most I've gone is 6 months.

Regarding Windows upgrades I would recommend Windows 2000 over Windows XP because Microsoft took Windows 2000 and added a whole lot of useless crap to make Windows XP - I find my computer is less stable under Windows XP than it ever was under Windows 2000. Other people will disagree with me I'm sure but I've found Windows 2000 much more reliable and it will cost you less if you can find a copy.

I agree - Windows 2000 is a much more stable operating system for professional use. I use it myself. You can kiss most games and shareware goodbye, though, if you convert; this may not be a problem in this situation, but I figured you should be aware of it.

Ask around all your computer-literate friends and see if any of them have a copy of Spinrite. You only need to run it once, and it doesn't need to be installed - it runs off a floppy disk.

"I know there's no point in leaving it going overnight because..." - I think you're mistaken. The noises you describe are "seek operations", a perfectly acceptable occurence in these situations, and they're not doing any harm. Once Scandisk has finished running these noises will stop. Just run it overnight somewhere you can't hear it...

The worst case scenario is that you end up buying a new HDD. I just searched drive prices on kelkoo.com, and the best deal I saw was a 30GB UDMA66 drive for £50.52+VAT (£54.05)...

(http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/shopbot/sort.jsp?field=price&catPath=uk/storage&catId=116501&from=shopbot)

Oh well, I guess ME is just too different to 95/98.

When you talked about shutting down other programs, did you mean the CTRL-ALT-DEL and end-task way, or just shutting down obvious things on the desktop?