grandsire02
asked on
Unable to get out of Checkdisk
I have run 'chkdsk c: /f /r' through the CMD command prompt as my PC recently crashed and although I managed to get it running again someone suggested that I needed to try do some repair maintenance (that person also thought that my hard drive might be getting a bit dicky). Anyway, I ran Checkdisk for some hours (7 or 8?) and at first everything seemed to be normal. It then seems that when it had completed the the requested check and repair sequence, it immediately started to go through the whole process again - in a sort of perpetual loop. I shut the PC down and tried to start again, and after the initial black Windows screen the blue Checkdisk screen starts up and when I try and get out of it by pressing 'any key' I'm just left with a message that Checkdisk has been completed and I cannot get out of that except by shutting the PC down. Whenever I try and reboot I get this same Checkdisk screen and problem. The other difficulty is that the PC will not start in Safe Mode - it just hangs with a list of System 32 files. How do I get rid of the Checkdisk instruction as the PC is obviously unusable at the moment (I'm sending this from my old 'steam' machine!)? I'm running XP Home SP2.
To add to ezaton's comment, if you wait for Checkdisk to run and finish and your computer never goes into Windows then I'd start thinking about wiping the system and starting from scratch. Before I'd do that though I check and make sure the hard drive isn't bad, since that seems to me might be the problem. Pretty much any brand of hard drive provides a utility that you can download and put on a CD or floppy and use it to check your hard drive. If you get to this point let me know along with the brand name of your hard drive and I'll post a link to the hard drive checking utility.
Hope this helps!
Hope this helps!
ASKER
My hard drive is a Western Digital WD1200.
Regarding Checkdisk and Safe Mode - point taken, but what would you consider then to be a reasonable time to wait beyond which it is unllikely that anything further will happen - 24, 36 hours?
Regarding Checkdisk and Safe Mode - point taken, but what would you consider then to be a reasonable time to wait beyond which it is unllikely that anything further will happen - 24, 36 hours?
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ASKER
Based on the advice given both here and elsewhere, I've decided to replace the hard drive.
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In Safe Mode your windows will take a while to boot, and during that time you will see the list of files. In chkdsk, especially with the /f and /r flags, you need to be patient. It might be that you have a physical problem with your disk, but stopping chkdsk half-way will lead you to a statue where you HAVE to go through chkdsk again, in full. It will require time and patience.