Help - Scandisk runs every time I start Win98.
 

A few months ago I unsuccesfully attempted to install an external CD writer. It caused major headaches, resulting in me having to re-install my device drivers.

The only problem I have now is that every time switch on it runs scandisk or the "Because your computer was not shut down properly.... checking drive(s) for errors" screen. One or the other, there is no pattern to which screen will appear.

One possible cause is that I may have used an old startup disk from my other computer during the re-installation process.

I have no errors on my drive and scandisk reveals no problems. I can abort the scan by hitting 'exit' but it would be nice if I could just switch on and walk away.

Any help would be much appreciated.

How are you shutting down? (I assume you're not getting this wrong, but hey - better ask!)

However, it may be due to the drive not having time to fully write everything to disk before its power gets cut off - it has to set a bit (8th byte, 4th bit) to let the computer know next startup it was shut down properly. Installing the CD writer may have changed timings slightly...

Two options. First is to try disabling fast shutdown using msconfig.exe (tick box marked 'disable fast shutdown). Alternatively, I think Microsoft has provided a fix, which simply makes your computer wait 2s longer on shutdown:

MS W98 Shutdown Supplement

Excellent W98 advice, cliche. Also make sure you have sufficient swap space. Clean out EVERYTHING from c:\temp, or c:\windows\temp, or c:\documents and settings\yourusername\local settings\temp (depending on your OS).

you could also use msconfig to disable scandisk running on startup. I don't reccomend it, but the option is there.

Thanks for responding to my plight. I've tried all of the above to no avail, including disabling scandisc on startup.

The exact message before scandisk starts is: "One or more of your system files may have bad sectors. Press any key to run scandisc.exe"

"Where is the 'any' key?!" (bad, old j/k)

Thanks again for the help. I guess I'll just have to suffer twenty seconds of torture, every day, for the rest of my shitty computer's life, which won't be very long, if it doesn't stop pissing me off.

For others in this situation: if you want to take the severe option:
(from Microsoft Support)
For you; that error message suggests your hard disc is getting towards failure. There's a technology called SMART which is designed to warn the system of a potential disc failure - it may be telling Windows that it's getting near the end of its life. What kind of hard disc do you have, and roughly how old is it? I'd certainly advocate making backups of any important files while you have the chance. It may be possible to 'map out' the bad sectors (I'll have a look once we know what type it is and run some diagnostics) but to be honest it starts to sound a bit like a new drive is in the offing...

edit: you could start by doing a full surface scan from ScanDisk in Windows. Select scandisk from 'tools' on the drive in question, and make sure the 'scan for bad sectors' box is ticked. It could take a while.

Ive seen the situation that Cliche has described. I agree, back up as much as you can. If the scan disk doesnt find anything on the drive in the way of errors, you might as well want to back up as much as you can and format the drive. If there is a problem in the boot sector it will always see an error, but sometimes will not be able to fix it.

You may have to do a low level format to completely clear any errors as well.