Look at the MSDOS.SYS file and in the Options section stick this in the

AutoScan=0

John

budgie wrote:

I have a 40G Maxtor C: drive which *very* occasionally seems to power down and
restart spontaneously. This is maybe once a month. A flag is obviously set, as
Scandisk (98SE) is invoked at the next boot and not only does the quick scan but
wants to do the full surface scan.

Every time I have let it do the full scan (200+ minutes BTW) it has come up
clean as a whistle. Absolutely nothing found. If I exit the surface scan, the
flag remains set until I eventually relent. The problem is the three and a
half hours of delay.

Without wanting a lecture on why "Windows knows best" and "one day, ..." can
someone tell me if there is a way to prevent Windows wanting to do a surface
scan on these - or other - occasions?