Win2k GURU NEEDED - Disk Checking - Can't fix errors

[Psyclone]

All,

I am at my wits end with this one and a net search turned up no answers for this one. As recently as a month ago, give or take a week, I was able to run a full disk check in Win2k while having the 'automatically fix errors' box checked. Suspecting that a disk error was causing me lost disk space, last night I attempted to run a disk check with the 'automatically fix errors' box checked. I was surprised and confused when I was told that the disk check could not be run because "exclusive access to the drive could not be obtained". The error message went on to say that the operating system or another process was causing it. lI am then given the option to run this disk check the next time the OS starts. I select Yes, and it does run the disk check.

My question is does anyone know why it would suddenly exhibit this behavior when I was able to run disk checks with error fixing before?

I have recently been battling with Norton systemworks 2002 and liveupdates failing for various components, so I did uninstall and reinstall that, then uninstalled it again since I never did get the updates issue fixed and I suspected it might be the culprit of denying exclusive access to my HDD.

Anyone heard of this and know how to fix it?

For the record, I am logging in as a user who is a member of the administrators group when this occurs.

Thanks,

-Psyclone

 

[bsobel]

> The error message went on to say that the operating system or another process was causing it

You don't say which volume this is, I'm presuming it's not your boot volume (I don't see how it could be). Failing to get access to do a runtime check is very common, as to do it the volume has to be taken offline. So if you have any open files to the volume (running a program from the volume, storing the swap file there, the indexer accessing files, etc) the system won't be able to dismount it for scanning. It's very normal to have to do this at boot time if you wish to do repair, are you sure you actually had the 'automatically fix errors' enabled before?

Bill

 

[Psyclone]

Yes it is my boot volume, my C: drive. BTW, I am running FAT32 not NTFS if that makes a difference. I suppose I could be wrong about being able to do it before but I seem to recall being able to fix errors before, maybe my brain is failing me. I don't recall ever not being able to fix disk errors within the OS. Anyone know the reasoning behind this restriction in 2k? I have no problems in XP or 98 fixing disk errors while in the OS.

 

[bsobel]

> behind this restriction in 2k? I have no problems in XP or 98 fixing disk errors while in the OS.

Xp has the same restrictions as 2k. As for the 9x line, they have the ability to take physical locks on the drive and make changes under the file system (this is what disk utils on those platforms do). This ability has always been full of issues (deadlocks being one of them). The memory, cache manager, and file system on the NT platform was designed for robustness. One of the things you give up to do that is the online volume locking.

Bill