Hard disk full XP profile will not load

[deac83]

Tried to log into my laptop yesterday and received a message that my hard drive did not have enough space and XP went on to load and reset up as a new user. Attempted to delete files to free space but system hung and became unresponsive. Had to shut down the system with the power button.

After that could not get past the profile screen. After a couple of hours searching for solutions, I figured out how to log in as the Administrator and got the laptop to fully boot but as the Administrator and not my normal profile.

I was able to get a couple of files I needed onto a USB. System has become very flaky as I attempted to do a back up but it keeps hanging in the middle and I have the do hard shut downs.

Tried to run the sysinfo file on the system but it gives me an error message that the configuration is incorrect and try and reload program.

Not sure where to start to fix this problem, will appreciate any help/suggestions.

 

[texasbullet]

Have you tried using the msconfig and uncheck all unwanted programs running at startup. After that you can start removing programs you no longer use in your computer followed by your documents.

 

[deac83]

No I have not. FYI, I won't be able to do this until Thurs/Fri as I'm on my way out of town. I'm assuming that I need to get to the command prompt to do this.

Chris

 

[LaptopNomad]

Connect your laptop hard drive to a USB cradle and access it using another PC.
The hard drive becomes a normal USB drive on this PC.

Then see if you can free up some space by copying your data elsewhere and free up space.

Re-insert the hard drive in your laptop and try again.

 

[deac83]

Good point on pulling the hard drive.

Oddly today, a week, later my user ID logs in, but it doesn't have my old profile.

When I go to explorer and go under documents and setting to see the data under my user ID I see the following folders:

usernaame
username.000
username.001
username.002
username.003
username.004
username.005
username.006
username.007
username.008

When I try to go into username documents it just starts clocking. I'm guessing that it might be indexing all the files (150GB).

Of course this locks me up so I can't do anything and I can't tell what the computer is doing (if anything).

ETA: All those profiles were created when this problem started. The root profile was last updated the week before. Also, the system is now using profile .001 when I log on.

 

[deac83]

I did get a USB cradle and was able to access the HDD from another computer. What I found was there are various files that have CRC errors. This prevents me from just doing a complete back up as the back up stops when it hits one of these files. When I tried to do the back up directly from the source laptop backups just hang when the hit the file with the CRC error, as an external drive it give me an error message.


I gather this means there is some corrupt data on the drive which is affecting my complete access.

I set up a scheduled chkdsk which I'm running.

 

[johnebadbak]

http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Cyclic-Redundancy-Check-Error

 

[deac83]

Thanks John. I ran chkdsk using that and when it got to the point of repair, it stopped since I didn't have enough space. So I'm doing a folder by folder copy and check as I move data to my external drive. Once that is done I'll delete files to get enough space for chkdsk to complete.

 

[TonyB25]

You should connect the drive to another computer and get your data off. The drive and computer have probably failed.

 

[johnebadbak]

Yeah windows requires at least a third of free space on the drive to run utilities this includes defragger as well

 

[DaveBurnett]

Does it??

 

[deac83]

I've gotten the primary file off the drive. I had deleted file to get to about 10% free space. When I ran chkdsk again it started making changes. At some point the computer hibernated but I couldn't see if it had finished. Ran chkdsk again and it was fixing errors but just sat in one error in step 4 of 5. Could not tell if it was hung up or not. I read where it could run for more than a day.

I did see it fixing files in the 'drivers' folders, which is probably not good.

Since I can access the drive, except the bad files, trying to figure out the next steps. Should I punt on fixing the drive, get a new drive and start over?

ETA: Running chkdsk again and it's back to fixing files/bad clusters. I'll leave run the rest of the day and see if it progresses.

 

[DaveBurnett]

Give up on using that drive (except for recovery of files) until you have run the manufacturers utilities on it and fully checked it -including a surface check. I would check the cables before you do too much to the drive.

By all means remove all temporary files and cache files from it before you start worrying about space.

 

[deac83]

Thanks.

FYI it's the HDD for my laptop.

Here is a summary of the current situation.

- laptop will boot up but it's now using user.xxx.001 (this is a new profile it made when I ran out of space and it could not load my actual profile).
- Copying files directly from the laptop to my external drive would hang up.
- I've pulled the HDD and plugged it into my desktop to access the files, I've recreated 99% of 'my documents' on the external drive
- As I copied folder I would get CRC errors for specific files. These were the files the backup would hang when trying to copy from the laptop directly.
- Ran chkdsk, but there was not enough space for it to correct errors, so I've removed 15GB of data files that I've now got on the external drive.
- Re-Run of chkdsk has found files and repaired bad clusters, but I have not been able to confirm it has completed successfully since. at some point, the computer hibernates (or the like) and I have to tap the power button to wake it up, which just starts off at the log in screen.
- Just re-ran chkdsk again it fixed a few files then told me it doesn't have enough space to complete. This is a 150GB drive with about 15GB free. Per one response above, suggested that I'll need more space to run chkdsk.

I'm trying to do two things at this point:

1. Get a confirmed run of chkdisk - not sure how much space I need to free up for this to complete
2. Figure out how to get my original profile to load

 

[DaveBurnett]

Have you removed all the files I suggested?