Chkdsk destroys W2K installation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Casian Moscovici
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Casian Moscovici

I've been running a robust and problem-free W2K installation with all
updates installed for over a year. Ignoring the old adage, "if ain't
broke, don't fix it," I thought I'd be proactive and run chkdsk to catch
any potential problems before they bite me. The procedure totally fried
the installation and I can't figure out how or why.

The sequence of events was as follows.

From the Windows Disk Manager I checked off both boxes: automatically
fix errors and scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.

The computer rebooted as expected and began its scan. Here, I noticed
the first anomaly. I could not see a progress window. Since I have
disabled the gui boot all I see on bootup is a list of loading drivers.
This list remained on the screen while the scan was proceeding instead
of being replaced by the usual chkdsk progress display.

Did this happen because I disabled the gui boot, or was there something
more sinister going on?

The drive light flashed for about 5-10 minutes and then stopped, with
the static list of loaded drivers still visible on the screen. Was there
supposed to be some kind of prompt or instructions that I was not
seeing? After about 15 minutes I tired of waiting and rebooted. The scan
ran again upon reboot and the same thing happened. This time I let it
sit there for a much longer time.

I left the room for a few minutes and when I returned, it had booted to
a blue screen warning me that no bootable device was to be found.
Further testing and investigation with the Recovery Console revealed
that the Windows installation on the disk was no longer recognized. No
NTFS file system, no drive letter, no disk name, nothing.

The disk is a SATA drive that appears to be in good shape. I was able to
restore the system with Ghost from a clone drive I had updated a few
weeks ago and it's now running just fine.

So what happened? Like doctors whose first rule is to do no harm, one
would expect diagnostic software to follow the same credo. Even if it
runs into problems, it should not make them worse. I'm afraid to ever
run chkdsk again!

Your insights would be much appreciated.

Casian
 
Casian Moscovici said:
I've been running a robust and problem-free W2K installation with all
updates installed for over a year. Ignoring the old adage, "if ain't
broke, don't fix it," I thought I'd be proactive and run chkdsk to catch
any potential problems before they bite me. The procedure totally fried
the installation and I can't figure out how or why.

The sequence of events was as follows.

From the Windows Disk Manager I checked off both boxes: automatically
fix errors and scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.

The computer rebooted as expected and began its scan. Here, I noticed
the first anomaly. I could not see a progress window. Since I have
disabled the gui boot all I see on bootup is a list of loading drivers.
This list remained on the screen while the scan was proceeding instead
of being replaced by the usual chkdsk progress display.

Did this happen because I disabled the gui boot, or was there something
more sinister going on?

The drive light flashed for about 5-10 minutes and then stopped, with
the static list of loaded drivers still visible on the screen. Was there
supposed to be some kind of prompt or instructions that I was not
seeing? After about 15 minutes I tired of waiting and rebooted. The scan
ran again upon reboot and the same thing happened. This time I let it
sit there for a much longer time.

I left the room for a few minutes and when I returned, it had booted to
a blue screen warning me that no bootable device was to be found.
Further testing and investigation with the Recovery Console revealed
that the Windows installation on the disk was no longer recognized. No
NTFS file system, no drive letter, no disk name, nothing.

The disk is a SATA drive that appears to be in good shape. I was able to
restore the system with Ghost from a clone drive I had updated a few
weeks ago and it's now running just fine.

So what happened? Like doctors whose first rule is to do no harm, one
would expect diagnostic software to follow the same credo. Even if it
runs into problems, it should not make them worse. I'm afraid to ever
run chkdsk again!

Your insights would be much appreciated.

Casian
Click to expand...

While a doctor's first rule is to do no harm, the hospital records
prove otherwise. They do plenty of harm (and a lot more good!).
It in the nature of their activity: Some of their activities are
extremely intrusive and many of them can have disastrous
effects. I'm sure Dr. Christian Barnard knew that his patient
could die within minutes when he did the very first heart transplant -
yet he went ahead!

It's much the same with chkdsk. In order to fix things, it has
to make changes to the file system. In the vast majority of all
cases it does it correctly but in some cases it gets things horribly
wrong. What else do you expect from an automatic process?
It can only deal with the situations that were anticipated by its
creaters!

Consider the fate of one of the European space rockets. It
exploded shortly after take-off. It turned out that the software
engineers had programmed it to self-destruct in case it should
stall, for obvious reasons. Now it did not actually stall but its
speed was much greater than the program had allowed for,
because the program had been written for an earlier slower
rocket. So the speed sensor went into overflow, the program
picked up zero speed and did exactly what it was designed
to do.

This may be little consolation but I think you were just plain
unlucky.
 
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