Cannot Scan Hard Drive for Errors

I've been trying to scan my hard drive (on a Toshiba Satellite running Windows XP Pro) for errors, but everytime I restart the scanning for errors screen comes up and says that the disk could not be scanned because the disk was closed to direct access or something like that.

I've looked under this hard drive's properties, but I can't seem to find any setting that would close it off to direct access. It defragments itself fine...

Is there anything I can do? Has anyone else had this problem????

It should set it up for scan on reboot. If this does not work, try disconnecting it from the network and disabling the AV and then running CHKDSK from the command prompt. Failing that, boot to safe mode, by hitting F8 on startup, then run CHKDSK, again from the command prompt.

You can also use the drive makers diagnostic tool to test the drive. Most of them have a DOS test that will test the drive without window interfering.

Thanks for the help guys. I really appreciate your replies.

Well I ran chkdsk from within windows, which worked, then I went and right clicked on the hard drive, clicked hardware, clicked the properties of my hard drive and clicked for it to populate the information on that drive. Then I clicked for it to scan for error and when it rebooted it scanned for errors.

I don't know if it will act like a normal drive now or what, especially since I'm not sure why its working now... But hey, at least its working now!

Dukeman said:

You can also use the drive makers diagnostic tool to test the drive. Most of them have a DOS test that will test the drive without window interfering.

Click to expand...

Since you have doubts about the drive, this would be a good time to run the full or advanced version of the manufacturer's diagnostics.