Can you cancel a scandisk?

Does anyone know how to cancel a scandisk? I set one for my external G:drive instead of my C:drive and now everytime my system restarts it starts a scandisk. It goes through the first three stages just fine but freezes atstage four and I have to disengage the drive and restart manually.

 

Firstly welcome to MG.

If you allow the scandisk to start, you should be able to either just press the cancel button (I presume you've tried this) or the ESC key and then click on Close.

What happens if you leave the external G drive disconnected? Does it still try to start scandisk?

 

The esc key doesn't work, and no when the external drive is disconnected or turned off it just starts normally. Since it never actually completes the 5 stage cycle it just keeps trying as long as its connected to the tower.

 

How long do you let it go? It, being chkdsk? Pending on drive size, this could be a LONG time.

 

last night I let it go for about an hour.

 

I am running windows xp, so I tried talking to dell about it for over 30 minutes. they were not very helpful.

 

Was there hard drive activity on the external drive?

I have seen chkdsk's last almost 2 hours.

There may be a way, but it requires modifying the registry.

 

No. its just a SimpleTech eternal drive that I store my music, videos, and movies on.

 

So are we talking scandisk or are we talking chkdsk? They are different programs although they perform similar tasks.

Depending on the size of your removeable drive they may take all night to complete. It also depends on the number of cycles you have set up for scandisk (which is what you first said) to complete.

 

The OP said he/she is running xp home, so, that moves it away from scandisk, to chkdsk.

The only way I know to remove chkdsk, is to plug the drive into the computer.

Then, when chkdsk starts, press esc to bypass it. Once in windows:
Click START, then RUN, then type in regedit (press enter).
Next navigate to the following branch:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager
On the right, modify key:

BootExecute

to match:

autocheck autochk *

Once, modified, exit, then reboot.

 

True. But in my defence the OP also said

 

Then, I shall retract my statement on what the original OS may or may not be.

 

My terms may not be correct, if so please correct me. On the window that pops up when you click on 'my computer' I right clicked on the G:drive, chose properties, clicked the second tab - Tools and chose error checking. It says it will do so the next time the computer is restarted. Is that Scandisk or checkdisc? What I have tried is to plug the drive into a different USB port, but it still registers as G:drive and still tries to run the task. I have assumed that it is simply a task that is cued, and if it is cued then it should be able to be canceled. I understand that I may be incorrect.