WinME Stop Scandisk on Startup

I'm trying to sort out a WinME system which always asks to do a scandisk on startup.

It may be quite justified in thinking that it ought to do one in that the machine *did* crash at one time and it's not been able/allowed to complete a scan disk since then (it's trying to do a thorough scan).

The problem is that it just doesn't complete, even after several hours. The disk's been scanned with other utilities (including a full surface scan) and I just want ME to stop trying to do this scan.

Can it be done? How does ME detect improper shutdown?

As a bit more background, this has been a pretty ill machine and I've got to the stage of reinstalling from scratch (even then I still get the scandisk). I suspect the disk may be causing the original problems in that it's got 20+ bad blocks but having got them all marked unusable I need to see whether it'll work OK now.

As I type, WinME is currently doing a scan disk and after 3 hours it's about a third of the way through the clusters.

Do you have a computer with win XP on it ? if you do then take the HD that has ME and hook it up as slave on the XP HD. Scan the ME drive using XP checkdisk to see if the ME drive is good. If it takes hours without finishing using XP checkdisk I'd say the HD is bad.

I'll tell you what I do when someone brings me a comp for repair that has Win ME, I tell them I won't touch it unless I can first install Win 98se/2000/or XP, I'm not even going to figure out ME....

To disable Scandisk on startup:
Go to Start > Run.Type msconfig and hit enter.
Click Advanced, and select the "Disable Scandisk after bad shutdown" option.
Click OK,OK and then Yes to restart your machine.

There's also a knowledge base article which may help.

SYMPTOMS
Although Windows may seem to shut down correctly, ScanDisk may run the next time you start the computer.
CAUSE
During the shutdown process, the contents of the virtual cache are written to the destination device. If the destination device is an Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) hard disk, data may be written to the hard disk's onboard cache but not to the disk itself. When this occurs, the data is lost from the cache when the computer turns off.

More info here - ScanDisk Runs Even Though Windows Shut Down Correctly