i replaced my oem 6 gig harddrive to a 40 and eversince have not been able to run scandisk completely to the end, it promps that it can not finish. could there be a blocked area? also therefore i cannot defrag either. someone suggested i reinstall me! any thoughts much appreciated. scre

Have you tried running Scandisk in Safe Mode? Disable your screensaver (if you have one running), and then run Scandisk in Safe Mode. Joe

me does not allow you to go into safe mode, windows 98 i believe was the last os where you could go into safe mode when booting up. please correct me if i'm wrong. scre

tap f8 just after post to get to safe mode

ferget ME O/S altogether.......use a ME StartUp floppy, reboot, get to A:\ prompt and type SCANDISK C:

but wait, there's MORE........... quote "First, run ScanDisk in Standard mode, to make sure the drives file system is OK. (Start menu - Programs - Accessories - System Tools - ScanDisk) If problems running ScanDisk, then reboot the system into SAFE MODE (hold down Ctrl or F8 key when rebooting, before the initial Windows splash screen, and at Boot Menu select the Safe Mode option) and run Scandisk. An additional advantage of Safe Mode is that it deletes some temporary control files, such as ShellIconCache, that might be corrupted. This allows Windows ME to correct some problems when it next boots into normal mode. It is also a good idea to run ScanDisk in Thorough mode if you have the time, to make sure there are no hardware errors on the drive. This can take hours to run on a large disk drive. Be aware, when a software FireWall logs hits it will do writes to the disk drive. This will cause ScanDisk and Defrag to restart. To get around this problem you either have to disable the firewall logging, disable the firewall during scans, unplug the internet, or run ScanDisk after booting into Safe Mode. TaskMonitor, Scheduled Tasks (TuneUp, PCHealth), Automatic Updates, System Restore activity, Spyware/ADware and other background processes will also cause writes to the disk drive causing restarts. In some cases it may be necessary to boot from a Windows ME startup diskette and run from the DOS prompt: SCANDISK C: to clear errors" unquote rob

rob i ran scandisk in safe mode, also somewhere in safe mode it said there was an area that could not be accessed and suggested partitioning, but when i went to do that it said i didn't need to do that, that c drive was 100% functioning. anyways i rebooted and did a thorough scandisk and it was stiil running when i woke up this am. when i get home i'll see whats happining. before in the past scandisk would never finish overnight, but this morn it seemed like it was still in progress. scre