In the past few days, I have been "cleaning up" my
computer uninstalling unneeded programs, particularly
those that start with Windows, etc. Now, when I attempt to
run Scandisk, I get the error message: "Scandisk has
started over 10 times and Windows or some other program is
keeping it from running... Try closing some programs..."
(not the exact words.) I have tried closing programs with
Ctrl/Alt/Del, closing start-ups with msconfig and
rebooting, and have also tried running Scandisk in Safe
Mode (which I usually do successfully if I have this kind
of problem.) Nothing seems to work. My drive really needs
to be defragged, but defrag does not run; only tells me I
need to run Scandisk first. Any suggestions?

Max