Win2k exclusive access to drive

[bytezboy 0]

Hey everyone, I got a problem I hope someone know of a solution or workaround. Whenever I try to use Scandisk or norton disk doctor to scan a drive, I get the following error: "The Operation System, or another process, currently has exclusive access to this drive, or some of its files. A repair can be schedules the next time you restart the system. ....Would you like to schedule a repair"? I know it's not a program I installed that is "locking" the drive or some of its files because when I reinstall Win2k from scratch and I run scandisk..it gives me this error. So this must be something within Windows that is causing this. I hate to restart the computer just to scan the drive, what happened to the old days of scanning the drive WITHIN windows? I hope this is possible, anyone know of a fix or workaround. Much appreciated. Thanks

[Tomay 0]

I had a similar problem a while ago. I runed chkdsk /f command from the command line (XP was running). If I ran chkdsk from the same drive I want to check it gave me a message about a program using somethin ...

... But if I ran the program like this D:\>chkdsk c: /f I had no such messages. Try running scandisc from another drive or from a floppy.

[Orcash 0]

bytezboy,

 

You can't check + fix the drive win2k is installed on while windows is running.

The os lock the drive for exclusive access because it maps some files to memory, like the swapfile, some dlls ...

If you want to repair the os drive, you must schedule the check for the next reboot, the check will be done before win2k take exclusive access.

 

Hope it helps,

Orcash

[vorlonw2k 0]

My self and my brother in law have hit this probelm in Win2K. Contrary to popular information about at boot time having check disk run, well it still told us we could not get exclusive access to the drive to have scan disk fix it.

 

Something that is little talked about that can allow you to fix it is a feature called recovery console. Baicly it is a text mode that allows you access to your hard drive. You have to login as Admin to do this.

It is on the cd but is not installed, you have to do it your self. You can run it from the cd, you can install it on your hard drive and run it from there, it takes about 7 Meg. of your hard drive for the files.

 

I installed it on my drive, at boot you have the option of starting recovery console or standard boot. Then you can run check disk on the drive and it will fix the problems and not have anything in the way from windows.

 

Url to a site that talks about the installing of recovery console.

http//www.cybertechhelp.com/html/tutorials/tutorial.php/id/51

 

No, I don't know if it exists for XP, never saw anything about it either way.

 

If you hit the wall like I did, I hope this helps.

 

Bob

[Tomay 0]

It does exist in the xp.

Run "d:\i386\winnt32.exe /?" straight from XP's asuming you have the windows xp cdrom inserted in drive d:, a nice help window will popup 8)

[jimf43 0]

Ok, here are the 'rules' guys. In NT, W2K, and XP, chkdsk can only be run from the OS on a volume that has been dismounted. That means that it the OS is using systems files on the volume, that, chkdsk can only be run on a reboot or from the install CD restoration console, which is basically a command line NT shell. I'm sorry that you have to reboot to perform some of the necessary maintaince, but, that is the price you pay for improved performance and stability.

 

The NT based systems are far more protective of themselves and their volumes than the old 9X windows, and, this is overall a good thing. It gives your system far more protection and stability. Additionally, those of you who are a little smarter, should know enough to have formatted your volumes as NTFS. That's another superior feature over the old 9X.