[mezzerooni]

hi...

the frequent crashes that were plaguing me for months are a lot less frequent now- bearable in fact.... not even once a week.
the main difference seems to be due to my installing "Advanced WindowsCare V2 Pro", despite some nervousness on my part- although i guess it is not a reg cleaner as such.... in any case, i use it frequently (almost daily) and i now have almost no crashes at all.
i also defrag a couple times a month (i use auslogics, although whether it is actually superior to windows own defragger i can't say) and use disk cleanup, as well as adaware and spybot S and D, but a lot less often than i used to, since advanced windowscare seems to take care of so much of that stuff so efficiently.
still not sure i'm not buying myself trouble down the road, but the first month or two have been great.

but to this post- the other thing i routinely do (because someone here suggested it, i'm sure) is go to "start", "run", "chkdsk".
but in the window, as chkdsk is starting, i get this message:

"the type of file system is NTFS.
WARNING: F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode"

it then runs through the 3 stages, verifies the Usn (?) journal, and closes.
can anyone tell me if it is still doing me any good? should i be concerned about the F parameter (whatever that is) not being specified? is there an easy way to specify it?

appreciate any feedback, as usual....

mezz

[TheOutcaste]

With out the F (Fix) parameter chkdsk will only check the disk, it won't fix any errors it finds.
R is another parameter you can use. It will scan for bad sectors and try to recover data. Takes longer to run though.

To Run Chkdsk:

Open a command prompt (Start | Run >cmd) and type chkdsk /r or chkdsk /f. You'll see this:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)

Hit Y and enter, then reboot. This could take a long time depending on size of drive and how many errors it finds.

To find out about other switches, open a command prompt (Start | Run cmd) and type chkdsk /? at the prompt.

HTH

Jerry

[TheOutcaste]

Forgot to add, if you run chkdsk c: from the run box, the window closes as soon as the command finishes, so if there were any errors you might not see them unless you sit there and watch it. By opening the command prompt first, it will stay open so you can check if there were any errors.
No real need to run chkdsk c: /f unless chkdsk c: finds errors.
If you are having occasional BSOD or hangs, run chkdsk c: /r. The R switch tells chkdsk to scan the free space for bad sectors. Free space is not checked with /F or in read only mode (chkdsk c:). If a program or the OS writes a temp file to a section of the disk with bad sectors, when the data is read back, it may be corrupted and this can cause hangs and crashes.

[mezzerooni]

hey, jerry..

thanks for the thoughtful reply... sorry i am so late getting back here.... this is great because it actually clears up the mystery, and gives me a way to actually get some benefit from chkdsk...
i am definitely still having BSOD's (like today, repeatedly)... was able to recover via a system restore, but the message was something about memory, which seems to be a theme these days.

anyway, like i said (or meant to) i have only just now found your reply and haven't even had the chance to run what you suggest, but am looking forward to doing so. i suspect it will turn up a thing or two.. who knows?

if it's at all interesting or likely to help someone else, i'll post back what i find...

thanks and apologies again... i really do appreciate what you senior guys do here, and always have....

steve

[Elvandil]

After a good chkdsk /r on your system drive, whether there are errors or not, you may want to test memory. Bad memory can cause disk errors and vice versa.

MemScope (Floppy and CD images.)
Microsoft Memory Test (floppy or CD ISO image)
Memtest86

[mezzerooni]

thanks, jerry, also elvandil-

took me a little reading and re-reading to get a handle on that new information, but i did finally figure out what you have been suggesting (didn't get the "cmd" option concept at first- didn't understand the difference... ). so i just ran chkdsk using the "r" function... and it did take a long time, and it found (and displayed) a zillion (or so) bad sectors and replaced them.
i had to leave the computer when it was 80% through stage 5- it had already done all the repairing, i gather- and came back to it 15 minutes later and the screen was back at to the desktop view.
so i assume it did its thing- i thought it might leave me a report i cold print out, but how useful that would be to someone as learn-as-you-go as me is questionable anyway.

so i also figure there is not much point in running an "f" test- presumably the "r" test took care of that stuff... or maybe i will, just for the experience. i also have not run the "?" function- that might be instructive/interesting.

so, elvendil (?) ... i also appreciate your noticing my reference to memory issues.... i am going to run that last test in your list of three, in hopes it will spare me having to burn a disk, mess with an ISO (i can grope my way through an ISO burn procedure, but am not all that swift at it yet....).
but i'm sure one of you could walk me through that if it came to it.

again, such an awesome resource here at TSG- it has saved my bacon and educated me in a kind, practical, and VERY gradual way, for 4 years now, by my calculation.

thanks again...

steve/mezz

PS- i used to get notified my email when i had a reply, but have not been getting that lately- and can't seem to find how to return to that configuration... any quick hints?
also- do you suspect i might benefit from doing a hijack this? just as a final kind of cleanup/tweak? i've requested HJT's a couple times in the last year and had no response- maybe my questions/issues were too vague (?).. and in the end i seemed to stumble to my own "solutions" (like buying a new computer- which, believe me, was NOT a total fix, maybe in part because i had one of my old harddrives installed into it..)
anyway, just picking your brains and, okay, taking sleazy advantage of possibly already having your attention....

[Elvandil]

Bad sectors are a bad omen. They generally mean immiment drive failure. Bad sectors can not be repaired. All chkdsk did was try to move the data from them to good sectors and mark the bad ones so they won't get used. But chances are that the drive is dying, so be sure to back up everything you need.

Try HDTune, too. It's not the greatest or most informative tool in the box, but it does a quick scan for bad sectors. If the number is increasing, the drive is dying.

[mezzerooni]

yikes...

well, first of all, i just went to memtest 86 and, duh, i had to burn an ISO to disk anyway- and now i have no idea what to do with the disk. for one thing, i've never really understood the concept of "bootable".

but maybe it's academic, with what you seem to be predicting.

but god, this computer is elss than year old, and even the hard drive from the rpevious computer (re-installed into this one) is less than 2 years old. could it really be dying already? am i dealing with hosers at my regular tech shop? is it finally time to get a mac? is the world about to end?

anyway, for now, i'll try HD tune- hopefully that's simple enough that i can't screw it up.

and thanks again for your attention.

i did recently connect to an backup utility that offers (i think) 50 gigs free.... "something-drive", can't recall offhand, guess i better be thinking about putting in some hours on that....

[TheOutcaste]

Chkdsk logs - You can find it in the event viewer, look at the
Winlogon entry in Application

Notifications - Goto My Account link at the top of the page, Edit Options and set preference under Default Thread Subscription Mode. You can also goto List Subscriptions and change the notification on one or several subscribed threads.

And as Elvandil says, lots of bad sectors are not a good sign, especially if there are more bad sectors found every few days. Deleting the partition and a full format MIGHT stop new bad sectors from appearing for a while (I have one that is going on 6 months with no new errors) but I wouldn't trust it with anything important.

[Elvandil]

You should always have a backup, of course. That axiom sounds hollow in the ears of those who have never lost everything due to a sudden drive failure, but hopefully you will be spared that eventuality by your proactive wisdom.

An iso is a CD image and needs to be burned as an image. It is not simply burned to CD.

How To Write ISO Files To CD

Free ISO burning apps:

Standalone ISO Burner (Be sure to check the "Finalize" box.)
Active@ ISO Burner
EasyISO
BurnISO
ISOBurn
ISO Recorder for XP (Uses XP's burner and adds context menu - Vista version also available.)

[TheOutcaste]

Memtest86 does have a floppy version, click the link for Download - Pre-Compiled Memtest86 v3.4a installable from Windows and DOS just above the ISO images.

Extract the files, place a floppy in the drive and then run install.bat. Once done just reboot with the floppy in the drive (assuming the floppy comes before the hard drive in boot priority).
With newer PCs you may have an option to bring up a Boot Menu instead of having to go into the BIOS to change the boot order. For my Dell it's F12 for Boot menu, displayed on the screen at the same time as the F2 for Setup message to enter the BIOS.

[mezzerooni]

i think maybe i did do the burning correctly...

i downloaded the zip file (memtest 86), unzipped it, opened nero, went to data cd, dragged and dropped the ISO file into the nero window, selected "burn", and it burned, i gather, a cd (appr. 2M) with the ISO file on it. is that the same as burning the image? could it be there really is such a thing as a stupid question?
anyway, my question is (if that sounds like i did do it right) how do i use the disk that resulted?
also, i don't have a floppy drive, so am hooped there.
thanks for the "my account" info, too. i think i have reconfigured for email notification now.

i still don't actually understand what "boot" means- no one has ever had much luck explaining that to me.

HDTune has checked my "C" drive (40 g, has most of my program files) and found no "bad blocks", and okay, now my other drive (80 g, mostly downloads) and has found no bad blocks there either. is there hope?
i've run its other diagnostic functions, but have no idea what to make of the results.

thanks again....

[mezzerooni]

hi...

i went to the event viewer and found that what chkdsk did was replace bad "clusters" , not bad "sectors"... is that different? like maybe not so dire?

i'm going to re-try the memtest burning ISO thing....

mezz

[mezzerooni]

okay, just a quick update to save you unnecessary energy trying to explain stuff to me....

i managed to burn windows memory diagnostic correctly, and was able to use it was a boot disk, and ran it, and it did the 6 tests and the verdict was "no errors"... so i'll take that as good for now, and now happily will be able to use it in future.....

thanks again for your time, energy, expertise, etc.

[TheOutcaste]

Sector - smallest physical unit of data on a drive, usually 512 bytes
Cluster - A group of contiguous sectors (usually 8, giving an Allocation Unit of 4096 bytes)

Windows deals with Allocation units, or clusters rather than individual sectors.

Glad you got the memtest working. I would suggest letting it run for several hours, or over night. Sometimes errors don't show up until several passes have completed. Sometimes the memory has to "warm-up" before errors appear, or it may be intermittant and might only fail once every 5-10 passes.
Be sure to turn off your monitor as there is no screensaver or powerdown, unless your BIOS is set to handle that.

Jerry