A solution to Defrag/Scandisk "a disk utility has locked this drive"

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Edward Mendelson - 29 May 2004 18:59 GMT

Over the years, a number of people have posted messages asking for solutions
to the problem that sometimes turns up in Windows 98 SE, in which Defrag or
Scandisk won't run on certain drives; an error message appears saying that
the program can't run because "a disk utility has locked the drive". Very
few clear answers have shown up, but I just found one that applies on my
system and perhaps on others also.

I use CD Anywhere to emulate a CD drive using disk images. Whenever I have
an image of a drive loaded into one of the virtual CD drives created by CD
Anywhere, and I then try to run Scandisk or Defrag, I get the "locked the
drive" error on the largest partition on my system (the other partitions
aren't affected); the partition also happens to be drive H: though I don't
know if the letter is relevant. All the other partitions present no
problems. If I "eject" the CD image from the virtual CD drive, the problem
immediately goes away.

This may not have anything do with other people's experience of this error
message, but it's definitely reproducable here. I'm posting it so that
someone who encounters this problem may be able to find an answer through a
Google search someday.

Edward Mendelson

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Bert Kinney - 29 May 2004 20:28 GMT

Thanks for passing that along Edward.
Here are a couple additional causes to add to the list.
Error Message: ScanDisk Cannot Check Drive:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;154998&Product=w98

Error Message "Windows Cannot Defragment This Drive now Because
It Has Been Locked by a Disk Utility" When Using Disk Defragmenter:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=286810

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Regards,
Bert Kinney [MS-MVP DTS]
http://dts-l.org/
How to Configure Outlook Express for Internet News:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=171164

> Over the years, a number of people have posted messages asking for solutions
> to the problem that sometimes turns up in Windows 98 SE, in which Defrag or
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> Edward Mendelson

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Edward Mendelson - 31 May 2004 16:51 GMT

Bert, yes, and thanks for adding that to this thread. Those are the
knowledgebase articles that people are typically sent to when they raise the
question, and the usual reply is that they don't apply to the current
situation.

After posting my message, I realized that the same problem may occur with
other CD emulators like Virtual CD (which I used to use). I'm just adding
the name here to make it more likely for people who search this problem in
Google.

Edward Mendelson

> Thanks for passing that along Edward.
> Here are a couple additional causes to add to the list.
[quoted text clipped - 30 lines]
> >
> > Edward Mendelson

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