G
Guest
OK, I've been struggling for WEEKS trying to get my PC to run CHKDSK on my
SATA harddisk without success, until last night. I thought I'd post the
results here so anyone else with similar problems can fix theirs alot quicker.
My set up is that I have 1 harddisk, a Seagate SATA drive which has
developed errors (possibly due to me running the machine during an electrical
storm which resulted in a power outage). I'm running off an ASUS A8V Deluxe
motherboard and running WinXP Pro with SP2. The HDD errors show themselves
through random reboots and BSODs, the response from Windows when I send in
the error report is that it's a hard disk error. Running CHKDSK without
flags confirmed this.
The problem, which many people have experienced is that you can't run
CHKDSK to fix errors if something (like your operating system) is using the
HDD, so you have to schedule it for when you next reboot. On reboot, nothing
happens, you just end up back in windows. My belief is that it tries to run
chkdsk before it loads the SATA drivers, so fails, but can't write a log of
the problem because it can't find the hard drive.
Very frustrating.
The eventual solution proposed elsewhere on this site is as follows. You'll
need the Windows XP CD, and your Motherboard drivers CD.
1 - Create floppy disk containing drivers for the SATA port. The
MAKEDISK.EXE application for this was on the motherboard drivers CD (Asus A8V
deluxe). The first time I tried, I obviously used the wrong one, as there
were 3 different sets of drivers on the CD. I ended up using the VIA
6284RAID drivers I think it was. IT depends what SATA ports your drive is
connected to. It has to be a floppy disk, The Recovery Console will only
allow you to load drivers from the floppy drive. If you don't have one,
you're screwed frankly.
2 - Put the WinXP CD into the drive and reboot.
3 - Repeatedly hit F8 during startup. Not sure if this works for everyones
system, but mine gave me a blue screen (not THE blue screen) with a selection
box to pick which drive I wanted to boot from. I selected the CD drive and
hit enter.
4 - I hit Enter a second time when prompted ("Hit enter to boot from CD"),
you have to do this quick or it ignores your selection and continues booting
from your hard disk, VERY annoying.
5 - Hit F6 when asked if I wanted to load any SCSI drivers in the Recovery
Console. Note: a number of these options need to be done quickly, so don't
wander off or start reading your manual or whatever, keep watching the
screen. Then waited while it loaded up all the other drivers.
6 - Insert disk and hit S when asked if you have some drivers for a SCSI
disk then hit Enter. This is a little threatening for me as a GUI slave, as
I know it's not a SCSI drive, it's a SATA drive. Select the drivers for your
operating system and hit enter again.
7 - Recovery Console then continues to load a shed load of oher SCSI drivers
and then asks what you want ot do next. Select the "Repair Windows through
Reovery Console" option.
8 - If you've used the wrong drivers, at this point it will say it cannot
find a hard disk and restart.
9 - You go through a couple more options here which you can ignore, then you
want to log in as the administrator at the DOS prompt.
10 - You should now have a beautiful pristine DOS prompt and access to your
C:\ drive.
11 - Type CHKDSK C: /R and then wait a long time.
I left it running overnight and it was completed this morning. It's an 80GB
hard disk.
I hope that this helps people.
SATA harddisk without success, until last night. I thought I'd post the
results here so anyone else with similar problems can fix theirs alot quicker.
My set up is that I have 1 harddisk, a Seagate SATA drive which has
developed errors (possibly due to me running the machine during an electrical
storm which resulted in a power outage). I'm running off an ASUS A8V Deluxe
motherboard and running WinXP Pro with SP2. The HDD errors show themselves
through random reboots and BSODs, the response from Windows when I send in
the error report is that it's a hard disk error. Running CHKDSK without
flags confirmed this.
The problem, which many people have experienced is that you can't run
CHKDSK to fix errors if something (like your operating system) is using the
HDD, so you have to schedule it for when you next reboot. On reboot, nothing
happens, you just end up back in windows. My belief is that it tries to run
chkdsk before it loads the SATA drivers, so fails, but can't write a log of
the problem because it can't find the hard drive.
Very frustrating.
The eventual solution proposed elsewhere on this site is as follows. You'll
need the Windows XP CD, and your Motherboard drivers CD.
1 - Create floppy disk containing drivers for the SATA port. The
MAKEDISK.EXE application for this was on the motherboard drivers CD (Asus A8V
deluxe). The first time I tried, I obviously used the wrong one, as there
were 3 different sets of drivers on the CD. I ended up using the VIA
6284RAID drivers I think it was. IT depends what SATA ports your drive is
connected to. It has to be a floppy disk, The Recovery Console will only
allow you to load drivers from the floppy drive. If you don't have one,
you're screwed frankly.
2 - Put the WinXP CD into the drive and reboot.
3 - Repeatedly hit F8 during startup. Not sure if this works for everyones
system, but mine gave me a blue screen (not THE blue screen) with a selection
box to pick which drive I wanted to boot from. I selected the CD drive and
hit enter.
4 - I hit Enter a second time when prompted ("Hit enter to boot from CD"),
you have to do this quick or it ignores your selection and continues booting
from your hard disk, VERY annoying.
5 - Hit F6 when asked if I wanted to load any SCSI drivers in the Recovery
Console. Note: a number of these options need to be done quickly, so don't
wander off or start reading your manual or whatever, keep watching the
screen. Then waited while it loaded up all the other drivers.
6 - Insert disk and hit S when asked if you have some drivers for a SCSI
disk then hit Enter. This is a little threatening for me as a GUI slave, as
I know it's not a SCSI drive, it's a SATA drive. Select the drivers for your
operating system and hit enter again.
7 - Recovery Console then continues to load a shed load of oher SCSI drivers
and then asks what you want ot do next. Select the "Repair Windows through
Reovery Console" option.
8 - If you've used the wrong drivers, at this point it will say it cannot
find a hard disk and restart.
9 - You go through a couple more options here which you can ignore, then you
want to log in as the administrator at the DOS prompt.
10 - You should now have a beautiful pristine DOS prompt and access to your
C:\ drive.
11 - Type CHKDSK C: /R and then wait a long time.
I left it running overnight and it was completed this morning. It's an 80GB
hard disk.
I hope that this helps people.