Suspect ntoskrnl.exe

[Big_Al]

I could not defrag my C: drive. It just hung at some point and would
not progress. So I stopped the defrag, ran chkdsk C: /r and set it to
run on next reboot. Then rebooted. And it did the long test and found
ntoskrnl.exe corrupt (or on a bad sector) and said it fixed the file and
replaced the bad sectors of data.

So after it reboots, nothing is wrong. The system just booted back up
like nothing is wrong. I expected errors galore. But nothing.

Should I be concerned? I found suggestions on how to replace the file,
and I even have an Acronis disk image I could replace the file from
there. But the stupid pc works?!!

 

[Leonard Grey]

Not to worry. Disk sectors do occasionally go bad, and when that
happens, Windows relocates whatever files were on the sector and marks
the sector as 'bad' so Windows knows not to store anything there. From
then on, happily ever after.

The only thing to be concerned about is if you frequently encounter bad
sectors. That may be a sign that it's time to replace the disk.

If ntoskrnl was actually corrupt, you'd see an error message (if you
could boot at all!)

 

[Big_Al]

Leonard Grey said this on 12/23/2008 4:03 PM:

Not to worry. Disk sectors do occasionally go bad, and when that
happens, Windows relocates whatever files were on the sector and marks
the sector as 'bad' so Windows knows not to store anything there. From
then on, happily ever after.

The only thing to be concerned about is if you frequently encounter bad
sectors. That may be a sign that it's time to replace the disk.

If ntoskrnl was actually corrupt, you'd see an error message (if you
could boot at all!)

This is the 2nd file in a week. So I'm keeping my images up to date
and backups up to date and have already perused for a new drive on
newegg. And for an IDE drive I'm surprised they are so cheap. Even
a larger one. (Hey! I get more drive space... WOW)

I've got a record of what is corrupting (if it is) and if I get annal,
I'll replace it from an earlier image. But I'm fine the way I am right
now.