Scandisk permanently starts on boot-up

I'm running Windows ME (somebody had to).

When I do a normal Shutdown everything seems fine but when I boot up again I get the infernal Scandisk saying "Abnormal shutdown detected" and it starts trying to scan my hard drive. It's only been happening for a couple of weeks and there doesn't appear to be anything else strange going on.

Obviously, I can live with this, clicking on Stop puts it back into normal boot-up sequence, but it's puzzling and I hate things which are puzzling, especially about computers. Damn it, they can only count on one finger, right?

Anybody got any ideas?

Edit the contents of the MSDOS.sys file, be sure that AutoScan=0.

More detail: Contents of the Windows Msdos.sys File

That happens on 9x systems when there's a physical defect detected on the hard drive. Let it run through a surface scan sometime and see if that changes anything.

Could be something seriously wrong with the drive. Could also be that your install of Windows ME is screwy (especially if you performed an upgrade and not a clean / full install. I learned the hard way...). Last but not least could be because you're not shutting it down properly like it says (i.e. using the power button versus going to ShutDown in Start, it crashing, etc.)

If you believe nothing is wrong with your drive you may disable it by going into your start menu and select Run. In Run type "MSConfig" and click OK.

In the main tab, labeled General click Advanced and then check the box saying "Disable ScanDisk after bad shutdown" and click OK. It'll ask you to reboot the computer. Choose yes and it'll stop bothering you... do this ONLY if you're positive nothing is wrong with your machine as it might know something you don't... then again, Windows ME tends to get drunk 99% of the time. I know this through personal experience.

This is reversable if want to bring the feature back. Simply go back to MSConfig and uncheck the box I told you to check.

Word of advice, stick to 98 Second Edition if you can get your hands on it... something Microsoft didn't do a rush job on or screw up plus it can still run almost all the aps and newer siblings can for the most part.

Clicking on Stop also sets you up for a repeat performance at the next boot! There are two bits in each boot record that set scandisk to go at boot. One is just the short version of scandisk, the other is surface scan added in. Only when scandisk completes it's tasks will either boot record bit be set to not run scandisk again. This is a function called by Win.com. I believe running either DOS scandisk.exe or Windows' scandskw.exe will work to reset those two bits but I can't swear to that.

I run with MSDOS's Autoscan=0 but will run Windows scandisk after a forced shutdown. If ie was open I often will find an orphaned web page snippet converted into a file on the root by scandisk.