[tomB4u]

Scandisk fails to run, with unavailable memory notice. I've tried everything that MS suggests. For years have been able to run both scandisk and defragmenter in safe mode with no problem, has been at least a year since scandisk even found an error on hard disk to repair. Now it won't run. Computer works fine otherwise and at reasonable speed with no apparent memory problems. Have 384 RAM installed. When online System Resources usually says I have between 32% and 39% of resources free, 392,000KB physical memory available. I've been told to install more memory (which seems ridiculous), to create a startup disk for the ME and run scandisk and defrag there, or simply to proceed to upgrade to XP, which I intended to do anyway. I'm not knowledgeable re computers, and have no idea which if any of these suggestions makes sense or is likely to solve my problem. Computer has no infected files, according to avast, and have run Spybot and another spyware program and I have no spyware. Adaware discovers nothing. I don't recall doing anything with the computer near the onset of the problem that would be connected to it, changing any settings, etc. (are there settings I can check?). Any suggestions as to what I should do next would be much appreciated.

Tom B.[font=Comic Sans Ms]

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My advice is to upgrade to XP which is much more stable and much less troublesome - believe me I've been using all flavours of Windows since 1994 and XP is the best so far -- so good in fact that I wonder how MS is gonna persuade people that they need the next new version.

I notice you mentioned ME (Windows ME I assume you are referring to) and let me tell you it was THE worst operating system that MS ever foisted upon us - whoever wrote the code for that should have been sacked.

Get XP and do a clean install (though you'll need at least 512MB RAM and 1ghz processor to ensure it runs at a reasonable speed). you won't regret it.
Depending on the age/spec of your current machine, you may want to splash out on a new sytem with XP pre-installed to save you the hassle of installing it yourself, but I have to say I prefer having my own retail copy of XP on a CD rather than just a recovery-disk which is all you get with a new system nowadays.

Edited by pip22, 03 May 2006 - 07:15 AM.

[pip22]

My advice is to upgrade to XP which is much more stable and much less troublesome - believe me I've been using all flavours of Windows since 1994 and XP is the best so far -- so good in fact that I wonder how MS is gonna persuade people that they need the next new version.

I notice you mentioned ME (Windows ME I assume you are referring to) and let me tell you it was THE worst operating system that MS ever foisted upon us - whoever wrote the code for that should have been sacked.

Get XP and do a clean install (though you'll need at least 512MB RAM and 1ghz processor to ensure it runs at a reasonable speed). you won't regret it.
Depending on the age/spec of your current machine, you may want to splash out on a new sytem with XP pre-installed to save you the hassle of installing it yourself, but I have to say I prefer having my own retail copy of XP on a CD rather than just a recovery-disk which is all you get with a new system nowadays.

Edited by pip22, 03 May 2006 - 07:15 AM.

[dsenette]

can you start in safe mode with command prompt? if so...do that and type chkdsk /r /f at the prompt and let it run...if it still won't run...do you have your ME disk? if so...boot to the recovery console from the cd (boot to the cd and choose the R option) and run chkdsk /r and let that run
also go to www.memtest.org and make yourself a bootable disk of memtest to test your ram...run it for about 2 hours...

report back any errors you recieve

unless you're planning on buying a new computer it would be best to figure out this problem BEFORE upgrading..otherwise you'll end up with m ore trouble once you do try to upgrade