XP Boot Disc Check Problem

[ZFT]

I’ve got an odd problem on boot up (XP Pro – Acer 5670). Everytime I get that nice blue screen and the ‘one of you discs needs to be checked for consistency……..’ message.
If I allow the check to continue it just hangs at 0%.

If I cancel, the boot appears normal.

Once booted:

Run chkdsk c: is OK

I can force it to run the disc check on boot up by ticking the ‘Automatically fix file system errors’ tick box on Tools - Error Checking which runs ok on the same drive id that is hanging but as soon as the check reaches 100% and completes it restarts and hangs yet again at 0%.

Any ideas please?

Edited to add that I'm assuming that this may well be another hard disc failure (2nd in 5 months!!) and everything is backed up.

[Lancelot37]

Have you tried downloading a free Registry Cleaner? Also the free trial of Ashampoo Disc Defragmenter.

[Turn It Off]

Have you ever reinstalled windows on this machine?

I would suggest backing up everything you need and doing a clean install of the system. It is advisable to do it every 3 months, but, I think thats a bit of an overkill, every 6 months to a year should be fine.

TIO

[ZFT]

RegistryVac cleaner has been run and Windows was (effectively) reinstalled only 5 months ago following a hard disc failure.
MS defrag running now.

[Turn It Off]

Check the IDE or Sata cables are seated correctly in both the HDD and on the MOBO.

What make is the HDD? some manufacturers have repair tools that you can download that will check for faults and can fix or mark bad areas of the HDD. I know Western Digital do (or used too because i used it before) but not sure about any others.

TIO

[Mac the Knife]

(from http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/13739/13739.html?Ad=1 )

A. When NT boots it performs a check on all volumes to see if the dirty bit is set, and if it is a full chkdsk /f is run. To stop NT performing this dirty bit check you can exclude certain drives. The reason you may want to do this is for some type of removable drive, e.g. Iomega drives:

1. Run the Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe). You must use Regedt32.exe and not Regedit.exe
2. Goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager
3. Change the BootExecute value from:
autocheck autochk *
to:
autocheck autochk /k:x *

Where x is the drive letter, e.g. if you wanted to stop the check on drive f: you would type autocheck autochk /k:f *. To stop the check on multiple volumes just enter the drive names one after another, e.g. to stop the check on e: and g: autocheck autochk /k:eg *, you do not retype the /k each time.

If you are using NT 4.0 with Service Pack 2 or above, you can also use the CHKNTFS.EXE command which is also used to exclude drives from the check and updates the registry for you. The usage to disable a drive is

chkntfs /x <drive letter>:
e.g. chkntfs /x f: would exclude the check of drive f:

To set the system back to checking all drives just type

chkntfs /d

Having said this, Windows is clearly confused about something.
A flag is stuck somewhere or something is upsetting it.

See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316506
and http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;187941

Or Google for 'XP chkdsk on boot' and sift through the answers.

[ZFT]

Mac,

Thanks for the links - very informative.

Seems I'm not alone

http://www.infocellar.com/winxp/disk-checking.htm

Looks like I either live with it or reformat!

Don't you just love MS

[ZFT]

Went from bad to dead.

Laptop started running slower and slower with error log full of disc errors (bad blocks).

Just hope Acronis works as advertised.

[Bushfiva]

Just hope Acronis works as advertised.

Yup, sure it will. Great stuff :ok: