chkdsk /r cured my non-booting PC.

[cozzmo1]

chkdsk /r cured my non-booting PC.

My PC had recently had the motherboard replaced under warrranty (many
hard crashes etc). but after the repair was running fine. (For a
while)

after a few days, it was getting the BSOD, (Blue screen of death)
occasionally.
then one morning it rebooted by itself and came up with a black screen
saying "missing hardware, and windowssomething.exe couldn't be found,
please insert the xp installation cd and hit repair"

When I put in the XP cd there would be a "hit any key to boot from
CD"
but for some reason it would always try to boot from the HD resulting
in the same black screen.

Now I had 2 problems
A: the PC won't boot from the HD.
B: I can't get the PC to boot from the install CD.

The problem for B: was that I have a USB keyboard.
it works for CMOS/BIOS, but when asked to press "any key" to boot from
the CD, nothing would happen.

I plugged in a PS2 keyboard and it worked. Somehow the any-key will
not read from the USB keyboard. (maybe there is a fix for this in the
BIOS that I haven't found)

After booting from the Install CD, when I pressed "R" for repair, it
only brought me to a DOS prompt, but didn't offer to repair anything.

I typed in chkdsk /r
and after a long time it finished without much of a message as to what
was repaired.
later I was able to look at the logs and found
"discovered free space marked as allocated"
at any rate, this seems to have fixed all my problems.
after that, the PC now boots from the HD and windows is working
flawlessly.
I am still unsure what caused the problem or if the problem will re-
occur.

Hope this may help someone that is ever in the same position.
Thanks,
crzzy1

 

[Unknown]

Usually one has to go to BIOS and change the boot device from the HD to the
CD in order to boot
from the CD.

 

[cozzmo1]

Yes, I did specify to boot from the CD in the CMOS, but even so, it
will ask me to "press any key to boot from the CD".
even when I removed the Hard drive from the options of boot devices,
it will then just hang asking that I press any key to boot from the
CD.
In other words, at that point I had to press a key. As it wouldn't
recognize the USB keyboard, I had to resort to the PS2 keyboard in
order to press the "any key".

Crzzy1

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Yes, I did specify to boot from the CD in the CMOS, but even so, it
will ask me to "press any key to boot from the CD".
even when I removed the Hard drive from the options of boot devices,
it will then just hang asking that I press any key to boot from the
CD.

Normally, there will be a timeout period, which can be up to several
minutes.

In other words, at that point I had to press a key. As it wouldn't
recognize the USB keyboard, I had to resort to the PS2 keyboard in
order to press the "any key".

Crzzy1

Many older systems didn't provide power to the USB ports until too late in
the power-on sequence to allow USB keyboards to be of much help. New
systems that don't have PS2 ports are designed to provide power earlier.

HTH
-pk

 

[dobey]

Usually one has to go to BIOS and change the boot device from the HD to
the CD in order to boot
from the CD.

The fact he was getting the message "press any key to boot from CD" means
the boot order was correct. The XP boot disk does this if there is an
operating system on the HDD, (a version of windows at least).

Most motherboards have an option to enable USB keyboard support and set it
for either motherboard or OS.

You should run chkdsk occasionally, (I would say once a month), and fix any
small problems before they snowball into a no-boot situation. If you just
run chkdsk without parameters it will run in read-only mode and report any
errors.

 

[Lil' Dave]

Some bios have the option of using a USB keyboard as legacy. Otherwise,
you're stuck using a PS2 keyboard. I try to stick to the PS2 keyboard
myself for emergencies that arise such as yours.

Chkdsk rewrote the file table based on what it found.

--
Dave
Profound is we're here due to a chance arrangement
of chemicals in the ocean billions of years ago.
More profound is we made it to the top of the food
chain per our reasoning abilities.
Most profound is the denial of why we may
be on the way out.

 

[cozzmo1]

You should run chkdsk occasionally, (I would say once a month), and fix any
small problems before they snowball into a no-boot situation. If you just
run chkdsk without parameters it will run in read-only mode and report any
errors.

The keyboard issue was just an inconvenience. The "no-boot situation"
is what really concerns me.
I am curious if this was
just a result of some bad crashes due to previous hardware issues?
It seems unusual that not running this obscure commands could render a
PC useless, have anyone else out there ever experienced this?

thanks,
crzzy1

 

[dobey]

The keyboard issue was just an inconvenience. The "no-boot situation"
is what really concerns me.
I am curious if this was
just a result of some bad crashes due to previous hardware issues?
It seems unusual that not running this obscure commands could render a
PC useless, have anyone else out there ever experienced this?

thanks,
crzzy1

Wouldn't call the command obscure. I expect it's not recomended that often
because it takes a lot longer, (because it checks the free space also), and
usually chkdsk /f will fix file system problems in the same fashion. I use
/r to check the entire disk when I install a new disk, and only if I suspect
a disk problem later on. Otherwise I do as I've suggested and use /f if
needed.

Small filesytem errors can snowball into bigger ones over time. Sometimes a
program refuses to run, when it is system files, then your OS refuses to
run. ;-)

NTFS is more complicated than FAT32, and I expect with the increasing
variation, (and quality), of hardware and software drive controllers around
there is a greater chance of file corruption etc. I don't know if using EEC
memory in your PC helps or not.

I've not had your particular problem, (as I run chkdsk regularly), but I did
have a situation where I was happily typing away and a littly yellow
exclamation mark informed me my system32 directory had become corrupt and
unuseable. Then I kept typing unhappily, as I knew I wouldn't be able to
reboot and needed to do a repair install. In that case it was a dodgy disk
controller causing the problems.

How long had you been running your PC without running chkdsk?

 

[cozzmo1]

Wouldn't call the command obscure. I expect it's not recomended that often
because it takes a lot longer, (because it checks the free space also), and
usually chkdsk /f will fix file system problems in the same fashion. I use
/r to check the entire disk when I install a new disk, and only if I suspect
a disk problem later on. Otherwise I do as I've suggested and use /f if
needed.

Small filesytem errors can snowball into bigger ones over time. Sometimes a
program refuses to run, when it is system files, then your OS refuses to
run. ;-)

NTFS is more complicated than FAT32, and I expect with the increasing
variation, (and quality), of hardware and software drive controllers around
there is a greater chance of file corruption etc. I don't know if using EEC
memory in your PC helps or not.

I've not had your particular problem, (as I run chkdsk regularly), but I did
have a situation where I was happily typing away and a littly yellow
exclamation mark informed me my system32 directory had become corrupt and
unuseable. Then I kept typing unhappily, as I knew I wouldn't be able to
reboot and needed to do a repair install. In that case it was a dodgy disk
controller causing the problems.

How long had you been running your PC without running chkdsk?

It is a new PC with xp and 2 gigs, it was wrought with HW problems in
the beginning and had the motherboard and PS replaced just 2 weeks ago
by the manufacturer.
I never ran chkdsk before this, however I have a PC that is 7 years
old and don't remember running chkdsk on it ever.
I am somewhat wondering if I am still having HW issues on this PC.

I just ran the second ever chkdisk /f and rebooted to be sure, the PC
has been running for a couple hours since and I just did a chkdsk
(below) and I am somewhat bummed to see that it found errors right
away again.


C:\>chkdsk
The type of the file system is NTFS.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is recovering lost files.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Repairing Usn Journal file record segment.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

312569513 KB total disk space.
190230436 KB in 54036 files.
18632 KB in 5841 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
172385 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
122148060 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
78142378 total allocation units on disk.
30537015 allocation units available on disk.

What causes this??