Hi Right now i'm runnig windows XP on my computer. When i go to My computer and press with the right mouse button on my hard drive i want to check harddrive for errors. If i start button my harddrive is being checked for errors. When i click where it says Automatically fix errors and press start a message comes up saying that the disc check could not be performed because disc check utility needs exclusive access to some Windows files on the disc. These files can be accessed only by restarting Windows. Do you want to this disc check to occur the next time you restart the computer? Has anyone experienced that kind of problem? I've tried doing it when i had Windows 2000 installed and Windows ME. I got the same message all the time. Can anyone explain why i can't scan my harddrive? Thank you

I get this all the time also just restart and it will scan then..............

alex That is not a problem - thatis normal -it is beacuse some files are in use Just click YES and then re-start your computer Chkdsk will run - that has replaced the old Scandisk Lesley

on win98 the computer doesn't need a reboot to fix errors. I wonder why on winxp the computer has to be restarted? is it because of the NTFS system on win2000/winXP?

i think so...when XP uses files, the program that opens the file locks it so that other files can't use it at the same time. Thus your scandisk can't gain access to those files. you need to reboot so that scandisk can scan the files before the programs take access to it again just reboot after scheduling the scan...that's the only way to do it (and it's the way you're supposed to do it