System Freezes During Hard Drive Error Checking

  • Thread starter Thread starter Frank
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Frank

Hello, I have tried to run "Error Checking" on my Windows Vista Laptop (used
to be called "Scan Disk" in the older Windows versions). For whatever reason,
the system freezes up on Stage 5 of 5 when the checking is 71% complete. I
tried doing this several times and it always stops at the 71% point. I have
to manually turn off the computer. Can anyone suggest what might be wrong
here and how I go about fixing it? Thanks in advnace.
 
Hi Frank,

Why were you running it?
Did disk activity actually stop?

Sometimes it appears to hang at a certain percentage but it's actually still
working. Keep in mind tha the percent figure is just an estimate of
progress, not a hard and fast figure.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
 
Hello Rick - to answer some of your questions..

(1) I run disk error checks all the time on my computers because I thought
this was part of the standard maintenance steps that users should perform. I
try to keep my computers running error free.

(2) It appeared to me that disk activity actually stopped at 71% on Stage 5
of 5. The reason I say that is that to the right of the percentage you can
actially see the number of files being checked and it was not moving. I let
the system sit idle like that for almost 2 hours and still nothing moved, so
I manually shut it down.

So where do I go from here? Do you think something is wrong because it did
not complete Stge 5. The laptop is only 4 weeks old!
 
Hi,

I wouldn't run error checking as part of normal maintenance, but there's no
saying you can't. I suspect it's hanging on a file, but as to whether or not
there is actual damage you should run a drive diagnostic tool. These are
commonly available for free from the system or drive manufacturer and run
from bootable media.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
 
I am having a very similar issue to Frank's. I've used PCs forever and
consider myself good at this stuff, but I'm stumped.

After using a new T61 laptop with no issues for a couple of weeks, I started
getting intermittent lock-ups. Wondering if it was related to the disk, I ran
the complete disk check (with surface scan). It always freezes about 80% of
the way through the free space scan. It's always on a slightly different
cluster number, but very close. Like Frank, I leave it for hours to verify
that progress really has stopped. At that point it only responds to turning
off the power.

Other things I've done:
- Run all the PC Doctor tests (a bunch of hardware tests that came
preinstalled) - passed both when running from boot and running under Vista
- Run a memory tester from Microsoft all night long - no lock up
- Installed utilities to monitor CPU and other temperaturs - no heat problems
- Run a drive fitness testing utility from the drive's manufacturer
(Hitachi) - no errors

I'm just about out of ideas. It will freeze at 80% of the way through that
disk check every time, and I'm wondering if that is related to the lock-ups
I've been getting.

I can't afford freezes up in the middle taking notes in a lecture (the
machine's main use), but it did happen at least once a day for several days
last week.
 
I am having a very similar issue to Frank's. I've used PCs forever and
consider myself good at this stuff, but I'm stumped.
Click to expand...

Well, if you consider yourself "good" at this stuff, stop being in
denial. If you run a full surface scan repeatedly and it freezes
around the same spot over and over that should be telling you several
clusters are messed up or at least the File System thinks they are.
Did you run with automatically fix errors turned on?

Surprise, Windows under NTFS is actually pretty good at repairing
common file system errors, but you do need to tell it to fix them
during the scan, otherwise it just reports it found errors. If it can
it uses the brute force method and just marks "bad" sectors and
doesn't use them after moving what it can out of them. You'll see a
summary at the end of any scan disk operation. You should always run
with auto fix turned on.

If you truly have "bad" sectors, ie, something physically wrong with
the disk platters themselves, not just the file system it should again
mark them then skip over them.

One way to know a hard drive is "dying" is it gets an increasing
number of hard errors. This may or may not be accompanied by your
drive starting to make sounds it didn't before. Could be a radical
change or something very subtle like a change in pitch or how loud
your drive is. You can try to "fix" a hard drive or confirm it is
going bad by using a utility from your particular drive maker, like
Seagate. Aside from that things like Spinrite may fix it, but you're
probably better off just recovering what you can from the drive and
replacing it. All hard drives fail sooner or later, often with
absolutely no warning at all which is why backup is so important.

A truly "dead" drive is one that no longer spins up or lost the
ability to accurately control the read/write heads. There's really
nothing practical you can do if something on the circuit board gave up
the ghost or one of the mechanical parts like the motor gave out. More
often the read/write heads drift out of alignment with the main
symptom the drive talking longer and longer to access files or not
being able to at all. That's where something like Spinrite might help.

If your laptop is new, take advantage of your warranty.
 
Thanks for your thoughts.

Yes, I'm running it with automatically fix errors turned on.

I fully expect chkdsk to identify bad sectors and mark them as unusable,
then move on. What's got me stumped it that it's NOT doing that. The system
just freezes at about the same point during the free space part of the scan
(step 5 of 5). That really doesn't tell me what's going on.

If that tells me, as you say, that "several clusters are messed up or at
least the File System thinks they are," how would I fix that? Chkdsk won't
more beyond that point!

As for taking advantage of the warranty, (a) I like to have some idea what
the problem is before I compain, and, related, (b) I can't really afford to
be without the machine for a long time, so if I can prove that is it the
drive (as opposed to the controller on the motherboard overheating or
something like that), then maybe I can convince a repair place to just swap
the drive instead of leaving or sending the whole machine someone for days or
weeks.

So, can you or anyone else out there elaborate on what the system looking up
during stage 5 might mean?

Since this is the free space scan part of the check, what has the file
system got to do with anything?

On, one more question: Does dskchk attempt to write to every sector, or just
read from each one? I'm trying to figure out why it passed the surface scan
in the BIOS, the surface scan in PC Doctor, and the surface scan in the
Hitachi drive diagnostic utility, but it dies during the Dskchk? Does this
point to a file system thing then? And if so, how to fix it?
 
I fully expect chkdsk to identify bad sectors and mark them as unusable,
then move on. What's got me stumped it that it's NOT doing that. The system
Click to expand...

chkdsk /r /p
 
Huh?

Invalid parameter - /p
Click to expand...

The P switch is not needed. All you need is the R switch. Regardless
it assumes you're running from the command prompt, which isn't
necessary.

You haven't said WHY you're doing a surface scan. In 99 out of 100
times it isn't necessary and just slows things way down.

Have you just run with auto repair set to see if it gets through?
That's all I ever do and it works the vast majority of the times. It
never takes more than a few minutes and often will find and repair
file system errors.

If you're running Vista, and you're doing the C drive and Vista is
installed on this drive, it will be locked and you can't do it. Vista
will tell you that, ask if you want to schedule it. Are you doing it
this way? If not, do it this way. It is what Microsoft's software
engineers designed into the system. It is one of the few things in
Windows that DOES work the majority of times.
 
Q1: Why am I doing a surface scan -- As mentioned in my first post above,
because I was trying to track down possible reasons for my system locking up,
and just trying every diagnostic test I could think of. Now that I see it
won't complete that scan, I am concerned.

Q2: Have I run it with only the auto repair option and not the surface scan,
and does that succeed? -- Yes, and yes. But that's not satisfying my concern
re. why the system locks up during the surface scan.

Q3: Am I running it from the Vista GUI, on the system drive, and scheduling
it to take place upon reboot? -- Yes.

So, no, it doesn't seem to work for me. And I'm apparently not the only one
with this problem, based on the first post in this thread, and also on this
thread:

http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...eral&mid=a612cb91-9074-4d78-9142-6cdd5011be24

Any other thoughts on this? Why would the hardware tests from the drive
manufacturer and others pass, but the computer freeze during the Windows disk
check?

Thanks in advance for any additional insight,
Chad
 
The P switch is not needed. All you need is the R switch. Regardless
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know :-) I always err on the side of completeness :-)
You haven't said WHY you're doing a surface scan. In 99 out of 100
times it isn't necessary and just slows things way down.
Click to expand...

Discs do occasionaly develop bad blocks...
 
Q1: Why am I doing a surface scan -- As mentioned in my first post above,
because I was trying to track down possible reasons for my system locking up,
and just trying every diagnostic test I could think of. Now that I see it
won't complete that scan, I am concerned.

Q2: Have I run it with only the auto repair option and not the surface scan,
and does that succeed? -- Yes, and yes. But that's not satisfying my concern
re. why the system locks up during the surface scan.

Q3: Am I running it from the Vista GUI, on the system drive, and scheduling
it to take place upon reboot? -- Yes.

So, no, it doesn't seem to work for me. And I'm apparently not the only one
with this problem, based on the first post in this thread, and also on this
thread:

http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...eral&mid=a612cb91-9074-4d78-9142-6cdd5011be24

Any other thoughts on this? Why would the hardware tests from the drive
manufacturer and others pass, but the computer freeze during the Windows disk
check?

Thanks in advance for any additional insight,
Chad
Click to expand...

If the drive passes the manufacturer's test and also passes test from
third party utilities plus it being almost brand new and only locks up
when Vista checks it, I would bet real money it's just more Microsoft
bungling. You know they're known for that. ;-)

If it was me, I just go on using it, be sure you have backups of your
critical stuff and if it happens again send it back.

If I listed all the little annoying goof ups and out right dumb things
I've seen Vista do since installing it over a year a go that post
would be thousands of lines long.

Reminds me of a true story. The Discovery Channel has been running
their excellent documentary on the NASA missions to the moon. With
little fuel left, the Lander several hundred feet from the surface,
the onboard computer on Apollo 11 kept flashing one fatal error
message after another. The controller on the ground responsible for
watching the computer kept giving a go signal, so they didn't tell
them to abort. in effect blowing off the warnings, betting there was
nothing really wrong. Armstrong could have freaked out and ended up
crashing. He just ignored the computer and landed by hand with 4
seconds of fuel remaining.

Computers sometimes just **** up, after all, they were designed by
humans. Giving a choice between listening to some computer or using
human logic, I'll take the human every time.

It later turned out the computer was throwing errors because it was
overwhelmed with unnecessary input and couldn't keep up.

Since few people actually run a full surface scan, maybe Windows just
freaked in the effort. Just my way of saying I don't know why you're
seeing what you are. Chances are others being honest don't know
either.
 
Problem resolved. See this thread:

http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...eral&mid=222c8b9c-2701-4cda-b2fc-82e8eda2cc42

The short answer is that CHKDSK completed when I ran it from a recovery CD
instead of from the hard drive.

Where to get a recovery CD if it didn't come with your computer (Lenovo
doesn't supply them)?

See the following:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/0...ion-cd-you-can-still-download-a-vista-recover

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070929/vista-sp1-recovery-disc/

Chad
 
Daniel said:
i fallow the thread however i don't see the resolved question,
could you please explain the solution here? i would truly
appreciate it.

if this is too much work, would you better define where i may see
the solved problem?
Click to expand...

The conversation you have decided to respond to started and ended in
September of 2008. It is now August of 2010. It is highly unlikely those
who originated/participated in said conversation are still monitoring it and
may not even be using the same operating system any longer.

<archival of post>
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...a.general/browse_frm/thread/fd4307ea10abb80d/
</archival of post>

Also - you changed the subject of the post in your reply - that is a
significant change and might help in losing much of the original posts
meaning (in this case - definitely.)

"System Freezes During Hard Drive Error Checking" went to "Final answer?" <-
much less descriptive.

Post 14 in the archival (the follow-up by Chad) seems like a pretty complete
and detailed answer.
 
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