Scandisk Hangs System

[Brode]

My aging Windows 98 SE box is giving me fits. After years of service it stopped shutting down--always reboots. I've posted that as a query and am working on the fix. Now a new "surprise." Suddenly, whenever Scandisk runs, either through Task Scheduler or by hand, it hangs my whole system.

What happens is that Scandisk begins normally and goes through its various cycles...until it reaches "checking folders and files." Then, when the graph shows about 15 percent remaining on the right, Windows hangs. The hard drive is pumping away, light flashing, but the operation never gets finished (well, I haven't waited forever, but Task Scheduler has given it about 20 minutes and a scan normally takes about 1 minute on my machine). Control-alt-delete doesn't work either. The only way out is to shut down by turning off the power. Then when I reboot it goes right to Windows, not even having the decency to behave as though Windows was shut down improperly (which it was) and not running Scandisk again in Dos.

With Scandisk out of commission I can't defrag, and that can really slow down my system. Anyone encounter this before? Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Brode

 

[KimLeece]

It could possibly be caused by a bad block or sector on the disk. You could try booting into dos either from floppy or via F8 and then running - scandisk /surface. This should perform a surface scan and either fix the problem (if that's what it is) or maybe it will get stuck at a certain block. If it does then you'll need to search around for a utility that can mark bad blocks - I don't know any out of my head but I believe that there are quite a few freeware utilities that will do that - download.com or tuscows should have something. If you have managed to do that try scandisk again. Also - from DOS - you could always try the older chkdsk utility - that will also sometimes do the trick!

Kim Leece.

 

[Brode]

My problem has been solved inadvertantly. My wife turned off the power to my box while Windows was running. When she rebooted ScanDisk ran in DOS. Since it was set to do a thorough scan and not just a surface scan it did so and must have marked the bad sector. All I know is that I returned home from a business trip and all seems to be well. Defrag looks to be defragging.

Thanks for your help!