Locked Out By CHKDSK

Davesnave

Last night, my XP system wouldn't power off, so I had to do a hard shut down. This morning, it has automatically gone into chkdsk, which is bad news as I've never got this utility past Stage 3 when trying it myself. Sure enough, that's where it seems to have stuck again: no hard disk activity that I can discern.

So, I can't get to Windows. The only thing I've managed to do is use a built in diagnostic to check the hard drive. This says it's fine, though chkdsk says the volume is dirty.

Is there anything more I can do? I have tried safe mode, but it won't boot up in that either, exhausting my rather limited ideas.

Presumably, if I could get to a command screen, I could turn off chkdsk, at least for a while. The computer is due for replacement anyway, but I want to take stuff off it first.

Any advice appreciated.

fwor

Best bet would be to boot it from a LiveCD and see if a non-MS filesystem checker can correct the problem.

My preference would be to use SystemRescueCD, which has GPARTED and TestDisk built-in. The former will show you the hard disk partitions, and has a check & correct option which should deal with the errors.

If the PC has been running for a long time with a corrupt filesystem you may lose significant amounts of data, and if system files have been damaged it's possible that Windows won't ever boot again without a repair install. However, you can use the LiveCD to copy all of your data off onto an external hard drive or pendrive for transfer to a new PC.

TakeThis

You can use the Recovery Console in that instance to un-set the 'dirty bit'.

Make and model of PC?

Davesnave

TakeThis wrote: »

You can use the Recovery Console in that instance to un-set the 'dirty bit'.

Make and model of PC?

It's a Dell Dimension 9150 running Windows XP media centre edition 2005

I'm not very techie, mind! (but I believe I have the Recovery Console)

fwor

TakeThis wrote: »

You can use the Recovery Console in that instance to un-set the 'dirty bit'.

Make and model of PC?

Ah yes - IIRC if you go to the Recovery Console and type "chkdsk /f c:" then it should in theory clear the flag. Provided that the volume is corrupted in a way that chkdsk can fix. If not, other measures may be needed...

I also seem to recall that you need a slightly different syntax for chkdsk when in the Recovery Console, but "chkdsk ?" should show you the options.

Davesnave

I have run the machine's more thorough diagnostic utilities, which find just one small sector of "uncorrectable data error" on the hard drive. Everything else checks out OK.

I have not yet run the Recovery Console, being a bit wary of it. Should I just go into it and type "chkdsk /f c" and see if that works now?

waddler_8

Davesnave wrote: »

I have not yet run the Recovery Console, being a bit wary of it. Should I just go into it and type "chkdsk /f c" and see if that works now?

The switch is different when running chkdsk from the RC.

chkdsk /r

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

http://forums.whatthetech.com/index.php?showtopic=95574

Davesnave

Thanks, CHKDSK says it is now doing additional checking & recovery, and it hasn't hung so far....44% done.

I will come back later to say how I got on. The machine I'm using to send this is a borrowed one from Cash Converters and it's so full of bugs a message like this takes ages!

Davesnave

OK that worked!

Thanks everyone, I will now set about making back ups of everything I've not already backed up. Lesson learned.