Windows

Option 1) Obtain Norton Utilites 2001 and boot from the CDROM. There is a much better disk checking program there that can run without Windows interfering in one way or another.

Option 2) Tell Scandisk to fix the error. You may have a troublesome sector that Scandisk is getting hung up on and having that sector marked as 'bad' would enable scandisk to go around it.

Note 1) If you have indeed developed bad sectors, consider replacing the hard disk or moving it to a 'secondary use' that isnot essential to the operating system. Bad sectors are often a warning of impending drive failure.

It also locks up after it has been scanning for a while. The screen freezes but the mouse works. Cannot close out have to hit the power switch.

Try this as well. Boot from a floppy disk and run scandisk without Windows interfering. If you have the original Win98/ME floppy disk there is a cab archive with scandisk and chkdsk in it.
Then if you find bad sectors fdisk and reformat the drive.Run scandisk from the floppy disk again. If scandisk finds bad sectors again then you have to replace the hard disk.
It has happened to me that a hard disk had bad sectors but they were "logical" not "physical". Once I reformatted it it worked fine.

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