I have a problem running ScanDisk. The quick scan works ok, but when I try to do the full scan it keeps starting over and over but never gets further than just one blue marker in the progress scale. What could be causing this and is there a way of fixing the problem so I can carry out a full scan?

The most likely cause of this problem is that something is running in the background and writing to the hard drive. This will cause ScanDisk to restart. Try closing all non-essential applications before running ScanDisk. Firstly, close all programs which are visible on the desktop. Next, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and close all non-essential programs which are listed in the box. The essential programs which you should not close include ‘explorer’ and ’systray’ (this list is not exhaustive). Try running ScanDisk and see if it still insists on restarting. If the problem still occurs, boot your computer into Safe Mode and then try and run it again. Safe Mode is a special diagnostic mode of Windows which is useful when you cannot boot Windows normally. It doesn’t load any non-essential drivers or programs which means that ScanDisk shouldn’t be interrupted. To boot in Safe Mode, restart your computer and when the ‘Starting Windows 9x…’ message appears, press the ‘F8′ key. This will bring up the Windows boot menu. In this menu, select ‘Safe Mode’ and press enter. This will load Windows in Safe Mode. When it has loaded, try running ScanDisk and you should have no problems.