win98 sec. edition

I have found that scandisk can be affected by virus scanners that scan all files as they are being used. Try disableing your virus scanner in the systray then do your scandisk. then you can reboot and let your virus scan come back on.

Rad

Scandisk and defrag both expect no other application to write (maybe even just access) the drive they are using. Boot to safe mode by pressing as soon as your computer's BIOS is finished it's Power On Self-Test (POST) and before Windows gets tofar in it's bootup. Safe mode prevents most other programs from starting. Press -- and end all programs except explorer. If you are using the quicklaunch or other toolbar in the taskbar then temporarily turn them off. Turn off and screensavers, some write to the hard drive. Now scandisk or defrag should run without having to restart their disk reads.

9 times our of 10 it's a virus scanner that's actively running from your systray. The Anti-Virus program most often found guilty of causing this problem is Norton Anti-Virus. Yes this is annoying but really, Norton is doing it's job right by trying to dis-allow direct disk access.

hello, MSCONFIG is a great tool for lots of things. It prevents items from running in the background, like Anti-Virus programs etc. To enure nothing is running in the background, I would shut everything off, when running your scandisk. The programsrunning in the backgraound are located in STARTUP tab. Reads this article to familarize yourself with this program.
http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/
Good Luck and Have Fun :)