How to stop Scandisk

As everyone knows Windows ME is a dog. But it is what we have.
It will just lock up at times. Keyboard dead, Mouse dead, Control/Alt/Delete dead. Only (unless you know another) way to get back up, is to flip the computer switch OFF. Wait and turn computer on again.
Now we get Scandisk. Would not mind Scandisk at all if it would just do the regular check. But it is automatically set to do a FULL
scan. Got a 120 Gig drive. We let it try once and scandisk just ran and ran and......... 14 hours later it was still creeping along.
How do we disable that lousey feature?
(I know - you can always say cancel - that is not the question.)

 

Check Scandisk.ini

Start > Run > Scandisk.ini

Look for and change (always to Never of Prompt)

Surface = Never ; Never, Always, Prompt

While you are there, this site documents some other changes you should make in this file.

And, if you are interested, these sites provide good guidelines on making Me run well.

WinMe Fixes(Jack Gulley)

Trev's Running Me Well

 

Don't despair!

The pages suggested by WhitPhil are really good.

My ugly duckling WinME used to crash 20 times / day, but now it's pretty stable! The only "problem" I have is with people who think I am an idiot because I still use it.

As a general rule, get rid of anything automatic / self starting.
- Restore
- Task Manager
- Any self-starting apps (Real Player, Windows Media Player, WinAMp, Office, printer "monitor ", hardware "management ", MNS Messenger, you name it).

When my comp boots, all the apps I let auto-run are:
- wincron (http://www.splinterware.com/products/wincron.htm)
an open source task manager
- RamBooster (http://www.sci.fi/~borg/rambooster/index.htm), one of many available memory managers, to cure the unavoidable memory leaks
- an anti-virus
- a firewall

I also use a NIST application (http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/service/its.htm) that resets the machine clock based on an atomic clock. But this app is 1) well behaved, 2) I set it up so that it exits once it's done, and 3) will complain if it can't get online, flagging potential problems elsewhere.

Each reduction in the amount of code your machine is running will improve its stability. To some extent, this is doubly so if the code is from Microsoft. It is also a good idea NOT TO USE Internet Explorer. There is a good number of better alternatives - Opera, Mozilla, FireFox...

Use
"Process Explorer" (www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml)
or TaskInfo (www.iarsn.com/taskinfo.html)
to find out what is REALLY running.

Use Start -> Run-> msconfig -> Startup
and Xteq Xsetup (http://www.x-setup.net/)
or any other tweaking tool, to manage what is allowed to start.

Also, check in the preferences of any apps you find to be self-starting and them in no uncertain terms NOT to start anything that you don't really want at boot time.

 

Why we use ME !!!

Thanks for the suggestions.

We did "All we could" (now that statement need explaining !)

1. I am posting this question to the BBS board using my computer with Windows XP Pro.
It is my "On-Line" computer and it has all the suggested tools and programs on it.
We do a lot of on-line stuff. And despite of all the cautions we do get a Virus, a Trojan and
other stuff. And when all those aids do not solve it, we just use a "boot disk" and reformat the drive and
"ghost" copy all data from a "Known Clean Drive ". Any data worth keeping we periodically save to a CD,
so very little ever gets lost.

2. The computer with Windows ME that is giving us so much trouble lately is my personal "Work Computer ".
The one we use for "Spreadsheets:, Graphics, Word documents etc.
It has no modem, never has had one, and none of the installed software has ever been exposed to the horrors of
the "Internet ".

However, we viewed that "scandisk.ini" data and it is as it should be. It does not call for "surface scan ".
We made sure and saved it again anyway.

And we even switched the Hard Drive over to the XP computer. Set it up as a "slave" and then:
Making sure modem was off line (actually disconnected from the computer!) - we ran a virus scan via Norton and found none.
Then made sure all Temp and History files etc. were deleted via "Tracks Erasure ".
Then ran the Ad-Aware programs and found no spy-ware.

3. Change jumpers and put the drive back in other computer.
On boot-up we got "Scandisk" full scan - message is "improper shutdown ".

We stopped that - let the desktop get set up.
Dropped down into DOS and ran Scandisk" Found no problems.

Shut down properly. Got quick message "OK to turn off..." and then ME shut the computer
off automatically. That was Nice !

4. Reboot - opps Scandisk again - improper shutdown.
We cancel that - let desktop come up.

We shut down properly - get message OK to turn off your computer... "
However it stopped there . So we did the off switch.

5. Reboot - Scandisk again - cancel that - let desktop come up.
We shut down properly - screen goes blank.
Nothing to do now but "off switch ". No other choice.

OK, the different shutdowns just described are typical - any time we shut down
there is no guessing which way the "Cookie will crumble ". Sometimes
automatic shutoff, sometimes just the "Ok to turn off" message and most of the time
a blank screen. (note - I do not ever use the reset button - I use the power off switch
when we must manually turn off the computer.)

Thanks for listening - there are a few more bugging things, but that Scandisk coming up no matter what is
a real pain. We'll ask later about turning off "numbers lock coming on at boot" .
Then how does one do that famous "RESTORE" everyone talks about but.
I try (yes, both in ME and XP) and each time we get a message "There are no restore points on this computer ".
Am I missing something ?

You can see we got a lot to learn -or forget - don't know which.

Oh yeah - Why do we still use ME? Because "all" my expensive equipment and programs just won't work with XP.
Why not update ? Can't - Take these two examples:

A. My favorite program for doing my budget and my taxes and other data is Microsoft Works 1.5. Try and buy a copy of program if you can ! If it ain't broke, why update it ?

B. MY digital camera is perfect (a very famous brand). The manufacturer will not support XP on my model and does not intend to do so.

If I had my way we would all still be using DOS !

Thanks for the links - we have run and printed most of the data.

 

A few more things to try.

You should start assuming that the shutdown isn't good. AFAIK, marking the filesystem as cleanly closed is the very last thing the OS does, and it cou;d still be that some stupid process is still getting in the way.

This is a known problem in Win98SE and WinME.

So in order:

1) There is a shutdown diagnostic right from the horse's (or the pig's?) mouth:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=273746

2) I also used Xteq Xsetup to give the shutdown procedure full 30 seconds to complete closing apps before going down. (I actually started with 60!!!). I think there's a number of other tweakers that allow you to do so.

3) If push comes to shove, you can also try a more muscular solution (after trying the above): there's a number of programs that actively manage the shutdown process. One is "Shutdown ", at http://www.rjlsoftware.com/software/utility/shutdown/.
You can invoke it with a link, and you can add options like "go down quietly" or "cut the bastards down" or "kill the bastards, go down, and resurrect thyself ". I still have it installed, but haven't used it in a long time, as the problem gradually disappeared.

Last but not least.... if the machine is REALLY used for serious work with a narrow and well defined scope, don't discount the power of Linux! Linux may be so-so and complex for "general unrestricted use" but if all you do is spreadsheets and writing, you may try doing it with a boot-from-cd distribution like Knoppix: no install required, it will let you try Open Office, only if you want you do write to the hard disk, and on most of my systems it showed to be on the par with WinME at recognizing hardware (and, in many ways, better than XP at doing so....). You can DL a Knoppix .iso image from www.knoppix.org, slap it on a CD and boot your comp from it.

 

ME fix in works.

Got it - thanks.

Printed answer and the data from all the links.

Now we'll go to work and solve a few problems !

We wore that "Red Hat" once. Not bad, but we'll stick with Microsoft for now.