In Windows 2000, you can't run a decent disk check straight off of Norton Utilities on your home drive. It initializes the drive, and runs "chkdsk" at the next startup. This has always worked in the past.

Now, when it runs at startup, it declares that it can't obtain exclusive access to the drive, and skips it. The system then starts normally.

Oddly, when I initialize the disk and start in Safe Mode, the screen freezes at the "Starting Windows" screen with the white bar at the bottom. It remains there for quite a while, with a lot of disk activity. Nothing else appears on the screen. Then it goes ahead and reboots, and starts normally into normal mode. If I restart, I can successfully enter safe mode normally.

I'm assuming, though I have no evidence, that a disk check is finally being run somewhere in the background while that frozen screen sits there. But this is a new one on me. I guess I must have installed something that obtains access to the main drive even earlier in the start process than Chkdsk.

I seem to be clear of viruses and adware.

Anyone have any input on this?