Will Not Complete Disc Scan

You didn't say which operating system you are using, for any of the windows systems you should be able to hit F8 during boot up. If successful you can try selecting last known good configuration.

How do you scan it? What program and what operation system?

If you are using windows in general: I have a very good experience with free "advanced windows care" program.

Freely downloadable and it keeps your computer in top notch condition. Repairs also most of the problems.

Hi Tledoux,

I removed and replaced the hard drive in my wife's laptop last week. Noticed in the initial stages of startup when it was doing its own Chkdsk that it did a preliminary scan and at 19% it seemed to stall - it wasn't though, there is just a long, long pause between the prelim scan and the end of the process (Step 5). The overall time for the process including Step 5 was around 48 minutes. Leave it a little longer from the 19% mark just to ensure that it may still be doing its thing.

I've had similar problems with XP on low memory (128-256MB) machines. I'd leave them running overnight to do a chkdsk (follow link) or a defrag. HOWEVER, another cause could be your hard drive is dropping sectors (basically dying) and chkdsk is trying to test and recover some sectors. That can take a long time also.

That Emachine seems to be on its way out. Have you tried looking on ebay for upgrades or a used (low cost) replacement?

Thank you al for your responses. i rebooted and held down f8 and clicked on last known good configuration so it is off the scan. i will have to just buy a new one and use this one for storing music on i guess thanks again.

Before you store even music on it, it should be reformatted and scanned for errors.

I would also use software that can read out the S.M.A.R.T. , you may get a shock and find its only usage is as a paper weight!!

I had something similar a few months back. Buy a new drive install windows, copy what you can from the old drive and if all else fails reformat it and then use file recovery software. Reformatting will make it readable at least in undamaged areas of the disk and reformatting doesn`t destroy data completely so it can still be recovered. I even did the old put it in a plastic bag in a freezer overnight trick and blow me it worked long enough to recover my files. But once it starts to play up its not worth trusting for anything important. Good source of magnets though. Its interesting that data disks screw up less than windows disks. The operating system hammers the windows partition with constant reading and writing. I have had an old drive as a data drive for many years with no problems. So the moral is don`t save data to windows boot disks.

Low RAM and heavy swap-file use does seem to age some hard drives a lot faster than others.

By adding enough RAM to stop swap-file use, hard drive activity is minimized AND computer runs at best speed. XP seems to have a sweet spot at 1 GB. At 512MB, swap file still gets some use (but not much). Some CAD and SIM programs could require > 1GB, but I have not seen any improvement above 1 GB with normal web surfing and office tasks.