The autorun-after-improper-shutdown instance of scandisk in ME runs in Windows, not DOS.
There is nothing wrong with my scandisk.ini file and I don't need to run scandisk in Safe Mode.
I don't need to run scandisk after booting from a startup disk.
And there is certainly no reason why I need to check my BIOS settings or use the diagnostics provided by Seagate.
The problem here is with scandisk being disrupted (NOT frozen, NOT terminated, NOT unable-to-run).
Scandisk is disrupted when other programs are interrupting it, causing the scan process to begin again and essentially making scandisk run perpetually or until it is cancelled.
The problem with this is that, obviously, an improper shutdown may cause disk errors, and that scandisk, if allowed to run impeded, can almost always fix these errors if run promptly. But if no scandisk correction occurs, and errors are allowed to accumulate, then eventually the disk will be completely compromised.
Now, of course I know how to manually disable processes so that scandisk can run unimpeded, but the point is that this is time-consuming and annoying and I just shouldn't have to, because the problem shouldn't be occuring at all.