Barry said:
I did the long test..twice.
Tell me, on the second attempt to boot, is CHKDSK running ?
Can the dirty bit get set, if the first boot fails, such that
the second boot repairs the partition with CHKDSK, and then
it boots ?
Maybe the partition is broken in such a way, that CHKDSK tries
to repair it, but doesn't actually finish the job properly. Leading
to the same apparent fault happening over and over again.
*******
I still don't know if your partition is NTFS or FAT32, but one
thing I do here about every three months, is copy the files off
C: onto another partition, reformat the partition, copy the files
back, then do a FIXBOOT to put back the partition boot sector. This
is faster than running the terrible built-in defragmenter, which
on occasion has taken longer than eight hours to run to completion.
If I copy files instead, it might take me 40 minutes to have a minty fresh C:.
To do that, I need a second bootable OS. One disk has WinXP. The
other disk has Win2K. I use a copy of Robocopy from Microsoft,
to copy the partition over, from WinXP to an empty partition.
If I'm booted from the Win2K partition, the WinXP partition
is not "busy", and that's why all the files copy correctly.
To do the FIXBOOT, I boot my WinXP SP3 installer CD, and run
the recovery console from there, after the C: partition has
been put back. If you have multiple Windows partitions, you
have to be a little careful with FIXBOOT, because of the difficulty
of determining which partition is which. (You're supposed to "log in"
to the partition, and I have different administrator passwords on each
one, so I can tell when I've selected the wrong one.)
It's possible to "install" the recovery console, onto C:, and make it
a boot time option, but I'm too lazy to do that.
My purpose in mentioning this silly idea, is you could try
copying the files off, in the hopes that a "fresh new file system"
would repair the problem. (I.e. CHKDSK isn't fixing it, so the
theory goes that a fresh file system might help.) If the copy stage
fails, in copying from the source partition, to the temporary partition,
then you know the thing is too badly busted anyway, and the experiment
stops there (time to "level and reload").
If all the files come off successfully, then you can format C: (since
you're booted from another OS), and then copy the files back. When you
format a partition, it erases the partition boot sector (the one that
says "NTLDR is missing"). If they didn't overwrite the damn thing, the
ugly part of this recipe would not be needed.
For a FAT32 formatter (to wipe C:, before copying the files back,
and having a "minty fresh" file system), I use this. I notice they
have a GUI version, and that's overkill
The nice thing about
this utility, is it does FAT32 on larger than 32GB partitions.
My WinXP partition is around 72GB or so. And this thing is fast,
because it doesn't erase every data sector, just writes a new FAT.
In roughly one second, you have a new, empty C:.
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/download/fat32format.zip
If your WinXP is NTFS, that wouldn't change things too much. You
could use Disk Management to reformat C: in that case.
NTFS is supposed to be a bit more robust (harder to damage) than FAT32.
But any file system can break, given multiple faults and enough time.
If you don't have a second OS to use, that procedure would be a
bit more difficult. I suppose you could build a BartPE disc and
use that (put Robocopy and other tools on it), but that is
"cruel and unusual punishment". That would take you all next
week to get running.
This is the Robocopy I use:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.11.utilityspotlight.aspx
Wikipedia lists the various releases of it - it copies files, but
does a better job than your average utility. The one I use is XP026
version.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy
This is the format of the command I use, to copy the entire partition.
(This is actually running in "mirror" mode, but since the destination
is always completely empty, I like to think of it as a "copy" operation.)
I have the tool create a log for each run, in case I suspect something
has gone wrong. I don't think this has a "verify" option, and if I
really needed to verify everything copied correctly, that would be
a lot more work. Since I'm booted from my second OS, the partition
letters are all screwed up.
robocopy J:\ E:\ /mir /copy:datso /dcopy:t /r:3 /w:2 /zb /np /tee /v /log:robocopy_J_to_E.log
Don't feel obliged to do that. Reinstalling will undoubtedly fix it,
or will identify that the disk is at fault. And if you're more
comfortable doing it that way (reinstall), then that's the way to go.
HTH,
Paul
