scandisk problem

Hi All,

At work I use a Win98 machine (among others) and can generally pound my way through problems, but have recently come up against one I haven't yet been able to handle.

I went to do some "preventive maintenance" on the computer and most of it went well, until I tried to run scandiskw.exe. It froze and the end result was a BSOD. I can reboot to DOS and run scandisk.exe. The first time it reported some freespace errors and purported to have corrected them, but a reboot to Windows still ended up with a a failure of scandiskw.exe to run. I then edited the \windows\command\scandisk.ini file to do a more thorough scan (which has bailed me out on many former occasions) to no avail.

I copied scandiskw.exe to a floppy from one of my home computers and did a DOS "fc /b" to see if somehow the file had been corrupted, but no differences were reported. I also updated my virus definition files and ran a hard drive scan for viruses, ran adaware to clean out spybots (it found and deleted two instances of data miner), installed and ran Norton Utilities which reported no problems.

The computer seems to run normally, but it bothers me that I can't correct this (minor) problem. I'm seriously stumped here. I don't do much with Windows/DOS any more. I use Linux for most of my important work and this problem doesn't seem to affect the operation of the computer.... it's just more of an annoyance.

Any thoughts?

 

dishawjp,

Just a thought here and it may not help. Have you tried closing all programs, through Ctrl-Alt-Delete, (except Explorer) and then running scandisk?

Mike

 

Have you checked to see if your system has the "FUNLOVE" virus? It may cause BSOD's running scandisk.

http://service1.symantec.com/sarc/sarc.nsf/html/W32.Funlove.4099.html

Just a thought.....

 

installed and ran Norton Utilities

By any chance did you have the above installed and remove them without cleaning out the Norton Protected Files properly.

If it is not removed properly it will leave corrupted files on the HD.

What you could try it to Enable Norton Protection for the recycle Bin

Reboot Windows then go to the properties of the Recycle Bin and select remove Norton protected files.

Then select Remove Norton Protection and MAKE SURE empty files is check also.

Then do not re-enable Norton Protection.

BillyBob

 

Hi All,

Thanks for the very prompt replies.

PLansdowne:

I updated my virus definition files as soon as I found the problem. They were about two weeks out of date. While I don't know anything about the funlove virus, I would expect that the updated definition files would have picked that up. Then again, it wouldnt hurt to try another update and scan.

Minnesota Mike:

I used the <ctrl><alt><del> to bring up "task manager" and killed everything except systray and explorer. No joy though... about half way through the scan, it died and then Windows became unhappy. It didn't always BSOD on me, but about `1/2 the time it did. Other times it would get eht taskman message that "scandiskw.exe was not responiing and I could kill the proces and Windows would stay up.

Billybob:

Thanks for the suggestions on NU. I had it installed on the c:\ drive and never messed with it except to check the system for errors. The install is minimal and recycle bin protection is disabled. Actually much of NU is disabled, but that's adifferent story. I allow Nu to check the registry, free space, directory and file structure and not a heck of a lot else. I kill sysdoc, oilchange, and a bunch of other "features" through DOS right aafter install. I do a "cutom install" and then delete the .exe and their associated files I don't want along with their registry entries immediately after installation. NU is good fir the most part, but they tend to throw in a lot of garbage (oil change and wipeinfo to name just two). There's also their resource wasting sysmon and crashguard or whatever they call them that I regularly blow awat at install time.

Thanks again for the responses!

I'll keep hammering away at this as I have time.

Jim Dishaw

 

Scandisk

Is there a post which I can read about scandisk restarting over and over again? I have tried to CTRL+ALT+DEL all programs except scandisk, but I end up ******** up my desktop.

 

windharp, yes there is, this forum has a search function. But quit killing Explorer and Systray, that I believe is how you are messing up your Desktop, as when you end Explorer it reloads immediately.

 

An easy way to check for the virus is to look for a file called flcss.exe. It is most likely not virus related if your definitions are up to date.

You can try the following troubleshooting link regarding Scandisk:

http://windows-help.net/windows98/troub-29.shtml