Scandisk

Hi
I'm writing for my niece who is running windows 98 she got the blue screen today after trying to open her outlook express and after the blue screen and the auto scan after a blue screen. (sorry I can't remember what that scan is called after the blue screen) The message said she should run scandisk. Well she called me awhile ago and said this scandisk has been running for a few hours. I was wondering does anyone know how long a scandisk should take? She said it keeps checking the folders and the numbers do change that pop up on the right side every so often but I would think a few hours seems like a long time to run. She is doing the standard and the through scandisk. Any thoughts on this time time amount would be appreciated.
Thanks

 

It sounds like it is continually restarting. Have her run it in Safe mode.

Length of time in standard mode will depend on the number of files and folders.
Thorough mode will depend on the physical size of the partition.

Contributing to both will be the speed of the PC and that of the drive.

 

Depends on a number of things: How large the hard drive and how corrupt the data is. I would say as long as the numbers are changing it's doing it's job. It's possible to make it run faster by closing running processes by doing ALT / CTRL / DEL and end task on all except Exployer and Systray. You do this Before starting scandisk.

 

Hi
Since I'm not real experienced with computers and neither is my niece, I'm trying to figure out the best way to start the safe mode feature. I see some post that say to press certain keys when windows is starting to get to safe mode, then I know there is something in the msconfig area, about starting in diagnostic startup. Also I'm familiar with the ctrl/alt/delete to end task but if I use the ctrl/alt/delete how do I get things to start up normally after running the scandisk. I just don't want to do the wrong thing.
Thanks

 

Safe Mode from startup: When you start the computer hit the F8 key a few times 3or 4 should do. You should get a screen that will give you choices.
#1 Safe Mode and so on. that's what you want.

Or if windows is already running use the ALT / CTRL / DEL and end task on all except Exployer and Systray. You do this Before starting scandisk.

When scandisk is done and you reboot all those you closed with ALT / CTRL / DEL will be back. You're just shutting them off until windows restarts.

 

Running the windows Scandisk using the Thorough Option, will take a long time. Thorough checks every file cluster, on a 8 gb drive it is checking over 4 million of them.
If you were to Restart in Dos Mode, and use this command, it will not take as long as it works faster.
scandisk /autofix /surface
However, let's get back to the real problem, the blue screen. This blue screen has a message, telling what has happened, although cryptic to the average user.
If you could post this message, and what program(s) was running at startup. I do realize Outlook Express was being attempted to be used, but other things may have conflicted.

 

scandisk and error message

Hi
First thank you for all of your responses. I talked to my niece and she said the scandisk was running for about 6 hours and she finally shut it off because she figured it wasn't working.

I found out what the error message was. It said "scandisk detected an invalid long file name entry,scan disk was unable to fix it.

At the time this happened she was connected to the Internet and was about to receive her mail in outlook express and everything froze. The mouse wouldn't work, nothing was happening. So she shut it down from the power switch and restarted the computer and that's when she got the error message.

Thanks for any info you may have about this error message.

I also asked her to start her computer in safe mode and maybe try running the scan disk again.