What sets off mandatory flash drive scan prompt Windows 7, can it be disabled?

[c627627]

When Windows 7 first came out, I think we talked about how "every time" you attach some USB flash drives, it prompts you to scan it and I think Vista does this too and I believe the conclusion was that this annoying feature cannot be disabled. (The flash drive doesn't need to be scanned every single time you attach the thing to your PC.)


Is it the old 'dirty bit' that is set there that triggers the mandatory scan prompt, did anyone figure out how to make Windows 7 stop asking for your flash drives to be scanned for errors?


EDIT: Three years later figured it out:

Start > Run > type:
msconfig
> OK > Services TAB > Click on Service to Alphabetize the display order > Scroll down and UNCHECK: Shell Hardware Detection [it disables Scan and Fix Flash Drive nag] > OK > Restart

 

[nd4spdbh2]

When Windows 7 first came out, I think we talked about how "every time" you attach some USB flash drives, it prompts you to scan it and I think Vista does this too and I believe the conclusion was that this annoying feature cannot be disabled. (The flash drive doesn't need to be scanned every single time you attach the thing to your PC.)


Is it the old 'dirty bit' that is set there that triggers the mandatory scan prompt, did anyone figure out how to make Windows 7 stop asking for your flash drives to be scanned for errors?

.... unfortunately i think we are stuck getting this error... i have gotten used to it but i think i made a very similar thread back in the day.

 

[CompuTamer]

I've never had this problem. It just gives me the autoplay prompt. Occasionally if i unplug the drive while it's writing (I never use safely remove hardware. Haha) it'll ask me to scan it.

 

[c627627]

Plenty of people do get this annoyance. The reason I wanted to ask again is because, doesn't this work just like when a regular hard drive is prompted to be scanned because of a dirty bit?

Dirty bit = a bit in a memory cache or virtual memory page that has been modified by the CPU, but not yet written back to storage...

 

[Mpegger]

I've only had this come up once, and that was because of the power going out. Other then that one time, I've never had Win7 ask me to scan any of my flash drives.

So my advice? Shut down properly, and remove your flash drives with the "safely remove..." option instead of just yanking it out.

 

[nd4spdbh2]

the reason that it comes up is due to recycler files.... when you safely remove a flash drive it properly stops the drive and stores proper files to recycler. when you just yank it when its done being used this doesnt happen... and thus you get the issue... honestly i have never had a drive go bad on my by not using the safely remove thing... i really wish there was a way to turn it off.

like i have said before i just dont know why win 7 and vista ***** when XP never did unless you pulled the drive AS something was being written to it.

 

[hafa]

FWIW, I "safely remove" my SD card reader every time and still get the nag message 80% of the time. It never, however, finds any problems with the SD card upon scanning (big surprise there) . I think, in my case, it may have something to do with the Faster SD-HC cards, as this does not seem to happen as frequently with the older ones...

 

[c627627]

There are cases when you follow all the procedures and still the damn thing wants to scan every time. I sure would like to kill it if possible and I know plenty of other people who would too.

I understand that a lot of you didn't encounter this problem, it doesn't always happen.

 

[hafa]

I found this option for Vista, should work in 7 as well:

Go to Start, type "cmd" without the quotes in the search box, and then right-click on the shortcut in the Start Menu and choose "Run as administrator". Once in the Admin Command Prompt, type "chkntfs /d" without the quotes.

Feeling brave, c627627?

 

[c627627]

I can try anything I want, I reimage all the time . That won't work. In fact there is no way to permanently disable disk checking, only temporarily, I just remembered I started a bunch of threads on that topic and I guess that would also apply to USB flash drives, not just internal drives.

In Windows 9x/Me you can permanently disable disk checking, but not in later versions of Windows, do a search and you'll see that those are only temporary solutions which get reset.

 

[TollhouseFrank]

reformat it to fat32.

when you format it with ntfs, the system starts doing checks on the drive and if it doesn't complete them (like yanking it before 'safe removal'), then it leaves an error state on the file system.

With fat32, it doesn't do that. No File System checks. Just in and out. If you don't complete the writes, oh well... but it doesn't turn on/off a file system flag like NTFS does.

 

[c627627]

Flash drives are on Fat32 and this problem still happens with them.

 

[TollhouseFrank]

Flash drives are on Fat32 and this problem still happens with them.

no they aren't. every flash drive i've ever gotten was preformatted in NTFS.

Reformatting them back to FAT32 solved it for me.

 

[nd4spdbh2]

no they aren't. every flash drive i've ever gotten was preformatted in NTFS.

Reformatting them back to FAT32 solved it for me.

i guess you could do that... but then you get to the issue of FAT32 limitations... namely 4gb file limit.

but still... thats a lame workaround for something that should be easily disabled.

 

[c627627]

On top of which, all my 4 GB USB Flash drives are Kingston and they all came FAT32 formatted so I am not a 100% that switching to FAT32 would stop the scan nag.

 

[madhatter256]

I remember working on a PC that would ALWAYS run a chkdsk every time the system was turned on, even after properly shutting it down.

There is a registry entry in the registry that controls this.

I googled the problem and found a reg file. see if that helps.

 

[nd4spdbh2]

I remember working on a PC that would ALWAYS run a chkdsk every time the system was turned on, even after properly shutting it down.

There is a registry entry in the registry that controls this.

I googled the problem and found a reg file. see if that helps.

maybe post the link?!?!?


OH and btw... its not an NTFS only thing... my 2gb flash drive formatted in FAT ... JUST FAT that i just plugged in displays the "scan and fix" dialog.

 

[madhatter256]

oh yeah? Try reformatting it as exFAT or FAT32 or even NTFS and see if it stops that. I ahd a similar issue with an old flash drive and it went away when I formatted it into NTFS.

Here's the link. Scroll down and you'll find it.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=171758

 

[c627627]

There is a registry entry in the registry that controls this.

I googled the problem and found a reg file. see if that helps.

Here's a thread with 36,000 views that says that your Googled reg file is only a temporary switch off

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=364018

 

[madhatter256]

Here's a thread with 36,000 views that says that your Googled reg file is only a temporary switch off

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=364018

Thought that reg file I posted might help in this case . Also, found that thread after I posted that link.

But then you should have no problem solving this problem on your own if you search google.