Win10 laptop threw a bobbly this morning.

[rans6andrew]

In the middle of editing a spread sheet (Open Office) our Dell Win10 laptop froze. After holding the power button for some seconds it shut down.

When turned back on it failed to start. A bunch of small text flashed onto the logo screen momentarily and then it continued with the following small text;Sorting Segment/Index pairs phase 2....100%

Writing sorted Segment/Index Pairs........Done

Total Heap Size.........................................6820

Writing Segment Heap.............................Done

and then the circular egg timer went around forever.

Google suggests a reboot and press of F12 and run some diagnostic stuff which I tried to do. The hardware testing did not find any issues. It then looked as if it was going to salvage stuff from the backup partition and I feared it would over write 100GB of our photos and files so I cancelled rather than OK'ing it and then let the machine do a hardware test? After that the machine came awake. It has stayed awake and we have backed up everything important but there is still something not quite right about the way it is working.

Some .pdf and .jpg files cannot be deleted. It is not a disk drive capacity issue, there is some 700GB free.

It is also suggested that the issue may be caused by an incorrect shutdown..........

The machine is still under warranty for a month or two.

We have not risked rebooting or opening the spreadsheet again.

When we have finished checking for files to backup I will run all of my usual virus checkers and disk tests and disk utility tests, what else should I do?

Thanks,

Rans6............

[SignalSquare]

As everything is backed up and with warranty running out, I would certainly try the spreadsheet again - and rebooting.
Try to repeat the error and then take it back when 'failed'

[jimjim1]

Once you have secured your files.

Do a full shutdown. Windows does not do this if you choose "Shutdown". I recommend disabling "Quick Start" (this may involve a Restart) and then doing a shutdown and turn it back on.

Otherwise, do a "Restart" then "Shutdown" and turn on.

With Quick Start (or is it Fast Start?) enabled, Restart re-initialises the software - Shutdown and turn on re-initialises the hardware. Or do it the other way round ??? Or both. By the way - I hate Quick Start.


Administrator command window
chkdsk /f

Read reports and make sure it's happy.

If you can do a useful System Restore consider that.

OR (you can do this anyway, at any time if you want to check the integrity of the OS files))

sfc /scannow

If UNFIXED errors.
{
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
(I think it's all case insensitive)

Sometimes it tells you to run it again - do so.

If it says it can't fix it I can't help you further.

Finally re-run sfc /scannow
}

These take a while to run and % progress reports are unreliable.

[rans6andrew]

Yesterday SWMBO got up and, being on autopilot at that time of day, turned on the machine and carried on as if nothing had happened. The machine worked completely normally.

Later I interupted her progress and ran my usual scans (Spybot, Ccleaner) and nothing showed up. When I launched the spreadsheet that seemed to trigger the problems the previous day it was just an empty file and when the data was re-entered nothing untoward occurred.

I was going to do the sfc scan but noticed that the machine has an SSD and I ddn't know if the test would be good/meaningful/harmful?

We have not been able to cause the issue to recur but will keep an eye on things. At least we have been prompted to do the first proper backup since the machine was bought.

[SignalSquare]

'sfc /scannow' won't harm your SSD.
Another quick thought - as the machine is new - have you cleared out all the 'bloatware'?
Otherwise glad all now settled down - keep backing up!!

[Specaircrew]

It's also a good idea to create regular 'restore' points so that if you have a system crash Windows will give you the option of going back to that point as one of its recovery options. Having said that I've fallen out of the habit of doing it myself because Windows 10 is so rock solid these days and its self recovery system never leaves you with the dreaded blue screen of death any more :-)