Chkdsk screen hangs

[developmental2]

Hi,

Win2k SP4. Fully updated. 80GB Pentium 4 1.7GHz Intel 850MV
motherboard, 512mb.
I have frequent reboots (for no apparent reason and without any message
or blue screen), while using the internet (ie6 sp1).
After the pc reboots, naturally Win2k does it chkdsk thingie and in
this black screen, it always reports success and no errors on drive C:
(I have no other partitions, Fat32), but, it doesn't continue to
Windows... I have to do a hard reset and then it starts windows okay
without the chkdsk screen...


strange or not?

 

[Dan Seur]

You may know all this - but anyway...:

1. UNCHECK the "automatically reboot" option in the Advanced/Startup and
Recovery tab in ControlPanel/System. Now the machine won't simply reboot
- it'll give you a blue screen that may contain a clue to what is wrong.

2. Most likely you have a hardware problem, assuming the machine has had
no recent significant software changes. Candidates are power supply,
overheating (bad fan), bad RAM (this does happen), bad cabling
connection (PCs vibrate a bit), failing hard drive (this can manifest as
a software problem when the drive corrupts the bit strings), and the like.

3. If you're comfortable fooling around diagnosing these kinds of
things, do so - else port the machine to a friendly neighborhood tech guy.

This is for starters...more detail available if you wish. Much of the
above can be done fairly easily. Good hard drive diagnostics, for
example, are free at manufacturers' websites; they are downloadable
images of bootable diskettes. Checking all wiring connections and making
sure fans are rotating involves removing the PC cover. And so on.

 

[developmental2]

You may know all this - but anyway...:

Yes, I knew most of it, but what I was mainly interested in is why does
the chkdsk screen not continue to windows? that will be a problem for
my users which are not used to such things. The intermittent reboots
are at least self operatable (if user does nothing, the machine will
boot windows automatically).

thanks

 

[BillW50]

Yes, I knew most of it, but what I was mainly interested in is why does
the chkdsk screen not continue to windows? that will be a problem for
my users which are not used to such things. The intermittent reboots
are at least self operatable (if user does nothing, the machine will
boot windows automatically).

thanks

I might not get this 100% technically correct, but hopefully you
will get the idea. Now chkdsk needs to lock the drive to perform the
chkdsk. As you can't have anything else writing to the drive at the
same time. As that would cause chkdsk to make mistakes and screw the
file system up.

No problem if it can do so. Unfortunately, if the OS is also running
from the same partition (drive letter) as the one you want to
chkdsk, well now it has a problem.

So it must reboot and load Windows 2000 into a mode that only allows
chkdsk to do its thing. It's kind of like the old MS-DOS mode under
earlier Windows.

Unfortunately, it can't continue loading Windows 2000 after a chkdsk
because it would be more limited than safe mode. And you and
everyone would be complaining why does it load up in such
uselessness?

So the best choice 99.9999% of the time is to reboot and load up the
regular mode of Windows 2000 that we all know and love.




Cheers!


______________________________________________
Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD & Windows 98SE)
-- written and edited within WordStar 5.0

 

[developmental2]

Date: 25 Sep 2005 04:12:46 -0700

I might not get this 100% technically correct, but hopefully you
will get the idea. Now chkdsk needs to lock the drive to perform the
chkdsk. As you can't have anything else writing to the drive at the
same time. As that would cause chkdsk to make mistakes and screw the
file system up.

eye, your explanation is logical, but I seem to recall that it did work
differently previously- chkdsk would complete, then windows would
continue to boot into normal mode.
(e.g. after power surges or blue screens). I have never experienced it
to lock like this and not continue to windows 2k. not complaining, I
just want to know whether this behaviour is normal


cheers

 

[BillW50]

eye, your explanation is logical, but I seem to recall that it did work
differently previously- chkdsk would complete, then windows would
continue to boot into normal mode.
(e.g. after power surges or blue screens). I have never experienced it
to lock like this and not continue to windows 2k. not complaining, I
just want to know whether this behaviour is normal

What is normal is after chkdsk is done under Windows 2000 on the
system drive (maybe a boot drive as well), is to reboot and then
load normally. On another drive letter, then it doesn't reboot and
continues to load.




Cheers!


______________________________________________
Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD & Windows 98SE)
-- written and edited within WordStar 5.0