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Scandisk, How can I stop it thinking I have an error on my hdd?

D

Devistater

Diamond Member
I have a little problem with scandisk. My computer froze when I was saving a game that I was playing, and when it rebooted it ran scandisk. This is all fine and normal, what's NOT fine is that it informed me that it thought I had bad sectors and proceded to do a surface scan. I let it run while I slept, 8 hours later its still scanning only 20% done!! Its a new 7200 rpm 80 gig drive, so I'm 99.99% sure its not a bad sector, its just that windows thought it did. On the normal scan disk it checks out. Unfortunately it tries to scan it on ever boot (I have win 98SE) and requires at least 3 presses of keys to get it to cancel (once for the message before scandisk starts, once to stop scandisk and once to skip the message that appears after scandisk). Anyway, what I would like to do is know how windows knows to start scandisk. Is there a registry entry or an entry in msdos.sys or a log or something? I found the scandisk log, and tried looking in registry but didn't come across anything. I just want to set whatever is it back to normal so that it will scan normal, without surface scan. I'll do a surface scan some point in the future.
 
In your root directory, you have a text file called msdos.sys. In the options section, add a line (or change it if it already exists) that says:

AutoScan=0

(0=do not run scandisk after a bad shutdown, 1=prompt before running scandisk(default), 2=run scandisk without prompting first but prompts you before correcting any errors)
 
I found that setting earlier and thought about it... but once I set it back to normal wont it start yelling about doing a surface scan again? I want to have it autoscan, its just that I want to reset whatever thing tells it I have bad sectors or whatever this one instance, then go back to normal. Well perhaps I'll just try it to see if it works. I'll let you know
 
I just ht enter and it skips right by it! Although if your drives having errors already after just being bought I would think about backing your important data up!
 
Hitting enter is fine if its the normal quick scandisk, lots of times I let it do that anyway since it doesn't take all that long. Unfortunately this is the surface scan thing. That requires 3 keypresses not one, one to bypass the message before scandisk starts, a 2nd to pass scandisk, and a 3rd to pass the message after scandisk runs. I'll quote the messages here ifyou want, basically it says that scandisk thinks I have bad sectors and it yells at me for skipping it. As I mentioned before, its because my computer froze in the middle of saving somthing, I know it doesn't have bad sectors.
 
Yep, I disabled scandisk running as described by one of the previous posters and it stopped it for when I had it disabled. When I set it back to normal, it insisted upon doing a surface scan again, so that didn't work. Any other ideas? Remember I just want to reset whatever thing is telling scandisk I need a surface scan and go back to normal operations.
 
I had that problem with a computer, and found a Scandisk setting that, if I remember correctly, disables "write test" and significantly shortens the scan period but maintains Scandisk's ability to repair errors... Go into the settings and see if you can find it. You should skip the scan at bootup, then run Scandisk manually, and the option should be available.
 
So, if I run the scan in windows the dos one won't bother me anymore? I'll have to try it then.

Bozo1: I tried that, as I mentioned above, it took 8 hours while I was sleeping to get freaking 20% done. No way in crap I'm going to let it run for 40 hours to scan a disk. I mean 40 hours without computer is a hardship man! 😉
 
xylem: It worked GREAT thank! Apparently the windows scandisk somehow tells windows when the last time was that it did a surface scan on the drives and the dos scandisk picks up on it. Anyway, no bad sectors as I thought. I let it do the win scandisk with write testing off while I was sleeping and next time I reset it didn't ask me to scandisk it again. Thanks
 
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