ScanDisk Continually Restarting (98)

[gbell]

Hi,

I tried to run ScanDisk as a routine preventative maintenance
and it says ScanDisk tried ten times and gave up.
Also, when restarting the PC it hangs.
I'm running Windows 98a and AMD 1.8
Any help would be much appreciated.

[Budfred]

Welcome to PCGuide!!

I would probably try to boot into Safe Mode and run Scandisk from there. I would probably also try other diagnostic software from Safe Mode if you have any. When you post back, please mention anything else that might be a factor in the problem. Have you loaded any new software lately or installed new hardware? Have you run virus and spyware scans with up to date scanners? Have you noticed any other problems with your system lately?

Good luck,
Budfred

[ErnieK]

Hi there gbell and welcome to PCGUIDE

When you run Scandisk you MUST turn off all programs running in the background. This includes Anti-Virus software.

When sitting at the desktop press "CTRL-ALT-DEL" together. This brings up the close program page. Highlight everything (one at a time) and end task for everything except SYSTRAY and EXPLORER. then start up scandisk. After Scandisk has finished reboot computer and Anti-virus etc will restart. Also remember ot turn off any Screen Savers you have set. Remember to defrag as well. (In fact you can do both through defrag (Go to setting and choose check drive for errors)

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Screensavers are the most likely culprit. Shut them off while you run any program that will take awhile.

[Sylvander]

I once set a Windows utility [Maintenance Wizard I think] to delete the temporary files every 60 seconds and then discovered that Defragmenter & Scandisc kept restarting [every time their temporary files were deleted I assume].
The good news is that I figured out what was happening as soon as I saw it, undid what I'd done, and all was back to normal working.

That illustrates quite nicely how programmes working in the background can interfere.

[dilsburger]

I ran into this problem one time and found loadqm.exe to be the culprit. Deleted it from the startup and never experienced it again. As stated before you don't want anything running in the background when running these utilities..

From another web forum -
LOADQM.EXE -- the purpose -

After weeding through debate on the discussion boards, the purpose of LOADQM.EXE is not clear. Some refer to the program as Microsoft's attempt to spy on you and report your every move to some sort of a central database system. The honest truth is that there is much speculation about what LOADQM.EXE really does.

[mjc]

dilsburger, LoadQM, is one of those MS programs that seems to be multi-function...it will behave differently in different versions of Windows, so that is where some of the confusion comes from. But the one thing most agree on....IT IS ANOTHER MS, "ON BY DEFAULT" APP/SERVICE THAT IS NOT REALLY NEEDED!!!!!!!!!

sylvander, every 60 secs?, I thought, I was a little on the fanatic side for keeping my temp files on a ramdrive ;).......but , just do the fact that the contents of the drive was changing is enough to make them restat


gbell, there are many different programs that can cause scandisk and defrag to continually restart, so it is best to run them(scandisk/defrag) with nothing in the background, usually the easiest way is to run them from Safe Mode.

[gbell]

I got it working now.

Brought up the close program page. Highlighted everything (one at a time) and did an end task for everything except SYSTRAY and EXPLORER.

Since I don't use screensavers, that was not an issue.

Thanks to all of you.

George:)