How can XP NOT check drives during BOOTUP?

[maa]

How can XP NOT check drives during BOOTUP?

I have 2 external drives connected to my XP machine,
and everytime it reboots(and XP is so absurd that
it has to reboot a lot), its trying to check them.

And if I am not there to hit-any-key to stop that
checking, it will take hours before that checking
is complete.

Is there any way to tell XP or the booting process
NOT to check them external drives?

Thanks,
maa

 

[Russell]

-----Original Message-----
How can XP NOT check drives during BOOTUP?

I have 2 external drives connected to my XP machine,
and everytime it reboots(and XP is so absurd that
it has to reboot a lot),

Why is you computer rebooting. Unless I have installed a
misbehaving program my windows xp will run until i do a
manual reboot. Although this reply does not answer your
question on the external drives; I think you have another
problem if you system is just spontanously rebooting.

 

[Ida Fiyou]

Disclaimer: I am not an expert.
This is usually a shut down problem.
I assume when you say that XP is "checking drives" you get an error
message at boot up saying "windows has encountered a problem and needs
to scan your disks" or something to that effect, then it counts down
and allows 10 secs or something to cancel disk checking?
I think you run msconfig.exe from the Start/Run and dick around till
you see "scandisk" and unclick that. Scandisk has destroyed roughly as
much data as it's saved for me so you're screwed either way. If the
system is hanging and making hash out of the system files or
partition tables, MBR, blah blah with an improper shutdown you need to
fix that or nothing will work for long anyway.
PS, what are external drives? You have 2 firewire enclosures chained
together?
Good luck, Russell.