It's depressing to see posts like this (which suggest the real
possibility of failing HD and looming data loss) that are glibly
answered at face value without considering the larger issue.
When I go into the properties of my primary drive and click on
Tools>Error-checking and check off both boxes (Automatically fix file
system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors),
For starters, blindly trusting ChkDsk to "fix" things on sight is not
a great idea. The fixing process may not only make things worse for
your data, but lose the cues you need to determine which of your
several thousand files might have been damaged.
I have to re-boot for the scan to take place.
This is because ChkDsk is a maintenance operation that requires full
control of the file system it is trying to "fix", which is never
possible in Windows as Windows *always* writes to C:
When I reboot, a countdown begins and a message says in order to
skip the chkdsk,
It would be AutoChk, not ChkDsk, that's operating during the boot
process. One crucial difference between them is that AutoChk has no
"look, don't touch" mode, i.e. you cannot get it to report without
"fixing" things. Neither AutoChk not ChkDsk can prompt you what to do
as errors are found; that ability came after NT and ChkDsk branched
off MS-DOS 5, when Scandisk was added to MS-DOS 6.
press any key before the countdown ends. The countdown always
freezes at about 5 or 6 seconds - and the computer freezes.
This is interesting, because AutoChk should not have started screwing
around with the file system at that point - after all, the user has
yet to give tacit permission for it to act, as there's still countdown
time during which the user could cancel.
AutoChk is normally the only startup entry integrated via BootExecute,
so at this stage there should be no other add-on software operating.
The only entities would be the boilerplate Windows code, which works
fine if you cancel AutoChk, and AutoChk, which (in your case) falls on
its ass if the countdown is allowed to continue, even before the
countdown actually finishes and it starts to do its thing.
If AutoChk started to work (i.e. you saw the countdown had completed)
and then died, I'd point to failing hard drive as the most likely
cause. As it is, this is still a likely cause, especially as I've
read that XP does some NTFS cleanup without formally running AutoChk
(i.e. without you actually consenting to AutoChk to run).
Does it start?
In order to get my PC running, I have to re-boot and press any key
before the countdown freezes. Then, it will start normally - but, of
course, chkdsk doesn't run. NOTE: I can run chkdsk /f from the
Microsoft Recovery Console - but not the way I described above.
You have some reason to suspect looming HD failure and/or corruption
of the file system (after all, isn't that why you're trying to run
ChkDsk in the first place?). And yet you're happy to run Windows,
which is going to write to this at-risk hard drive and file system.
I don't read "I have successfully backed up all my data and have
imaged off C: so I can restore the system if the HD fails", so IMO
it's negligently presumptuous to assume this is the case and give you
advice that may in fact make things worse.
I would...
- backup your data at the file level
- image off C: at the partition level
- check HD for physical defects
- if not physically perfect, replace HD
- repair file system
....in that order.
If it were me, I'd use Bart CDR boot to do the first step without
booting the HD's Windows at all (thus sparing the at-risk HD from
Windows' incessent HD activity and writes).
I'd use BING to do the image backup, then Bart again as the OS from
which to test the HD using free HD Tune, which I have integrated into
by Bart mOS. I'd be forced to use ChkDsk to repair the file system if
HD was > 137G and/or file system was NTFS, simply because there is no
alternative tools that suck less.
Failing HDs can rapidly progress to complete collapse (rampant bad
sectors, or fail to be detected by BIOS, or fail to spin) within
anything from an hour to months. If you only have an hour of
useability, you don't want to squander that on pointless diagnostics
or file system repair, much less running Windows.
Hence the advice: Get your data off first, then an image of C: so you
can get the system back, and then do diagnostics etc.
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Drugs are usually safe. Inject? (Y/n)
