Help, Disk Check won't stop?

[Paul T]

When booting up our Laptop running Vista it say Disk Check should be run,
when running it gets through the first two stages fine but then starts
scrolling "Recovering Orphan File" very quickly and will not stop unless I
force a hard shut off by holding in the Power button. If I choose not to
run Disk Check by hitting any key Vista boots up just fine.. Any ideas
what's going on here?? It's a 5 month old Dell Vostro 1000 with Vista Home
installed from the factory.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Perform a Disk Cleanup before running Checkdisk:

Click on the blue Vista start button and then on the Computer
entry in the Start Menu. Right-click on your hard drive and
select Properties > Disk Cleanup > Files from all users.....
More Options > Clean Up (System Restore and Shadow Copies).


--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

---------------------------------------------------------------

:

When booting up our Laptop running Vista it say Disk Check should be run,
when running it gets through the first two stages fine but then starts
scrolling "Recovering Orphan File" very quickly and will not stop unless I
force a hard shut off by holding in the Power button. If I choose not to
run Disk Check by hitting any key Vista boots up just fine.. Any ideas
what's going on here?? It's a 5 month old Dell Vostro 1000 with Vista Home
installed from the factory.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Paul.

My guess is that it is recovering orphaned files, just like it says. :>(
The files are still there, but the file system has lost the folder that
points to them.

That doesn't sound good, and it may not be good. But whatever damage is
involved has already happened. At this stage, your best course is probably
to let Disk Check do its job, then try to determine what has been done and
clean up any mess that is left.

How long did you let it run before powering off? Seconds, minutes or hours?
If it was recovering thousands of small individual .eml and .nws files in
the Mail Store, or photo files in your albums, it might take several
minutes, even hours, to get them all. If you power off before it finishes,
it probably has to start at the beginning again next time.

When it finishes, there's a good chance that your drive will be usable again
and that your files will be safe. NTFS is a much more resilient file system
than the FAT system that many of us grew up with. But if it doesn't manage
to recover those files, you will probably have three choices, none of them
perfect: Either (1) delete the recovered files and forget them, (2) try to
use one of the several file-recovery programs available, or (3) check out
the cost of a professional file-recovery service (usually expensive) and
decide whether your lost files are worth that cost.

Let Disk Check finish, if it will, and then post back and tell us what it
reports at the end.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1)