Need some help on W2K & "Disk Inconsistency"

[drgrafix]

Lately, everytime I boot my IBM T21 Thinkpad which runs W2K, I get
this awful black screen noting that there's inconsistencies in my HDD.

I can press any key to bypass the "problem" but I want to solve it it
and not avoid it. OK, so a little histor is in order. The machine
has a 40 Gig HDD partitioned using Partition Magic into three
partitions (C=10 G, D=15 G, and E = 15 G). These are approximate
sizes. I have plenty of memory as the machine is maxed out at 512
megs, and the drive is an upgrade (faster) than the OEM that was in it
prior to installing this one. I should note that the problem surfaced
recently, and I set up the new HDD almost a year ago.

In the old days, we simply ran scandisk and fixed all the problems but
W2K doesn't exactly have scandisk. I have run the disk cleanup twice
with repair options, but I'm still getting the black screen after
about three or four normal days of booting and suspending and shutting
down then powering up.

I've obviously tried defragging the HDD and of course that doesn't do
much either. Not one partition of the drive has 50% taken up by
programs or data. I use the C drive for the OS, anti-virus stuff,
Zone Alarm, a couple of important programs, and utilities. Most
programs are on D:/ drive, and E:/ is used for data storage like docs
and graphics.

The message indicates that the type of file system is FAT32, and I'm
wondering if the C:/ drive should be NTFS or FAT32? Should I use
Partition Magic to reconfigure the drive partition? It's kind of
bizzarre that it's been nearly bulletproof for almost a year, and in
the last month I'm getting these messages.

Any/all advice or ideas will be appreciated.

Mike

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Lately, everytime I boot my IBM T21 Thinkpad which runs W2K, I get
this awful black screen noting that there's inconsistencies in my HDD.

I can press any key to bypass the "problem" but I want to solve it it
and not avoid it. OK, so a little histor is in order. The machine
has a 40 Gig HDD partitioned using Partition Magic into three
partitions (C=10 G, D=15 G, and E = 15 G). These are approximate
sizes. I have plenty of memory as the machine is maxed out at 512
megs, and the drive is an upgrade (faster) than the OEM that was in it
prior to installing this one. I should note that the problem surfaced
recently, and I set up the new HDD almost a year ago.

In the old days, we simply ran scandisk and fixed all the problems but
W2K doesn't exactly have scandisk. I have run the disk cleanup twice
with repair options, but I'm still getting the black screen after
about three or four normal days of booting and suspending and shutting
down then powering up.

There's chkdsk in Win2k - in a command prompt, type chkdsk c: /f. You'll
have to shut down and restart in order for it to run on your system volume.

I've obviously tried defragging the HDD and of course that doesn't do
much either. Not one partition of the drive has 50% taken up by
programs or data. I use the C drive for the OS, anti-virus stuff,
Zone Alarm, a couple of important programs, and utilities. Most
programs are on D:/ drive, and E:/ is used for data storage like docs
and graphics.

The message indicates that the type of file system is FAT32, and I'm
wondering if the C:/ drive should be NTFS or FAT32? Should I use
Partition Magic to reconfigure the drive partition? It's kind of
bizzarre that it's been nearly bulletproof for almost a year, and in
the last month I'm getting these messages.

I personally prefer NTFS, as it is more "self-healing", doesn't need
defragging as often. If you convert with PartitionMagic, I believe you're
given the option of which cluster size you want, which you don't get with
the native convert command (it will use 512k clusters, which isn't as good
from a performance standpoint).

 

[John Doue]

There's chkdsk in Win2k - in a command prompt, type chkdsk c: /f. You'll
have to shut down and restart in order for it to run on your system volume.



I personally prefer NTFS, as it is more "self-healing", doesn't need
defragging as often. If you convert with PartitionMagic, I believe you're
given the option of which cluster size you want, which you don't get with
the native convert command (it will use 512k clusters, which isn't as good
from a performance standpoint).

The first problem is finding out why you have this situation. Inasmuch
you shut down the machine properly each time, this should not happen. I
suppose one of the programs you use does not exit properly without you
noticing it. Did you check "event viewer". Then, try uninstalling (not
upgrading)ZoneAlarm and reinstalling with the latest version. Check
carefully its settings to make sure you are indeed sufficiently
protected. Then, could you Anti-Virus be playing some tricks? I do not
suggest disabling it for a few days but I would be tempted to try that
to under controlled circumstances.

Did you run Adaware for other nuisances and spy programs ?

Did you run a surface check on your hard disk, on each partition? Did
you activate SMART (since this is an IBM machine, should be installed)
to check your hard disk ?

Do you have some unusual utility running in the background ?

Have you tried disabling Powersaving (the hard disk part only) ?

All this are checks worth looking at to identify the cause before
deciding on what to do. Converting to NTFS a failing disk or a disk with
unidentied problems is suicide, IMHO. Personnally, I do not like NTFS
but the choice, as always, first is personal and then a matter of
preference.

Lastly, I have had cases where PartitionMagic detected problems in a
partition with the command "Check" that went undetected with the normal
windows tools. I had to boot from a Win98 boot disk and run its
utilities to find and repair a problem in the FATs. This is not to say,
use PartitionMagic to detect problems but cannot hurt.

Hope this helps you find what is wrong.