Carol. Is Scandisk really failing to start because the drive is faulty or another program is preventing it from doing what it needs to? I have a tool called Spinrite which I use for all such eventuallities, but it runs from a boot disk and of course won't work with speech. An engineer could be expensive, especially if the drive isn't failing at all. As I said check Scandisk. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Carol Pearson Sent: Thu 27/01/2005 14:52 To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [access-uk] POSSIBLE DRIVE FAILURE - ADVICE PLEASE Hi all, (Not my day today . . ..) <SMILE> I'm trying to diagnose a problem which may be a drive failure. JAWS became sluggish recently and I can't pin it down to any installation so I decided it was time anyway to do a SCANDISK. This *DIDN'T* work. Of course, it couldn't be done whilst in Windows but I receive an error report that the SCANDISK couldn't be performed . . .. I have recently noticed the hard disk showing signs of something wrong also - sounding a bit like a record stuck in the groove - and this may account for some or all of the problem. Should I try to defrag anyway, or are there any other tests I should carry out before calling out an engineer? -- Carol carol.pearson@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.echurch-uk.org/testimonies/carolp.php -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.7.2 - Release Date: 21/01/2005 ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq