I have WinXP SP2. I just ran Scandisk (I think…all I did was click D: -> Properties -> Check for Errors and some program ran) which took about 2 hours with both options enabled (“Fix File Errors” and “Scan For/Recover Bad Sectors”) Once it was done, all the program said was, “Disc Check Complete.” No report, no log, nada.
How do I know it actually DID anything??
2nd question…I scheduled a scan for C: on next reboot, but now I’ve decided I don’t want it to do that, since scanning D: took so damn long. How can I cancel that scheduled task?
As far as I know, by going about it that way there isn’t much you can get as far as results.
To cancel the one sceduled at startup, just restart your computer. When it begins to start up, it should say something along the lines of “Disk check scheduled, and will begin in 5 seconds. Press any key to cancel.” Just press a key. See here for more info: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315265
Bear with me, I may have everything backwards. I’m not the alpha geek around here.
Near as I can figure, you told your computer to check the D: drive for errors. D: drive on most computers is a CD drive of some kind, so your computer checked whatever disc you had in D.
The C: drive is your main hard drive, and that’s probably what you intended to check in the first place. I can’t guarantee how fast that might go, but it’s good to do that occasionally. After that, the software may tell you that it’s time to run a Disk Defragmenter. Or not. The defrag takes programs that are scattered far and wide on the drive and cluster them together. They run faster that way, and they take up less room.
I have a feeling he has multiple hard drives (or at least partitions). My optical drives are G: and H: (DVD+/-RW and CD-RW). I have 3 physical hard drives (internally), one of which is partitioned in two, so C-F are hard disks. Then I have I: which is my compact Flash drive (since it’s a multi-card reader, there are also memory slots for J K and L. When I turn on my external hard drive, which I use for backup, it’s M:. I should do a chkdsk on drive M.
Scary to think that I have 500GB of HDs in my computer and I was browsing for a 300GB drive to pop in here in the next month or so. However, I’m a photographer, and the RAW files are very large, with the 16-bit TIFFs I convert them to being even larger, so I do have an excuse!
Thanks ishamael69 for the reboot info; both HDs are brand new so I didn’t expect any errors, it was just a routine maintenance check. Didn’t expect it to take so LONG, though…2 hours on D:!!
I’m kinda peeved that Chkdsk is nearly useless for reporting what errors, if any, it found…I’m so used to Norton Disk Doctor in Win98 which was amazing for reporting and fixing errors, but AFAIK there is no NDD for WinXP! It’s just a frontend for Chkdsk, apparently.
And why does Chkdsk need “exclusive access” to the system drive, anyway? It never complained about that under Win98.
That it is. Which just goes to show you the faith Norton puts into their own products. I wouldn’t touch anything with “Norton” or “Symantec” on it with a 10-foot pole, especially on a misson-critical system. That’s just begging for trouble.
That’s because Windows 98 is stupid. CHKDSK needs exclusive access to any open files on your system - running CHKDSK against most types of database files as well as the pagefile (which is likely your issue) can result in either corrupted files (databases) or BSODs (pagefile).
Also CHKDSK took so long because you ran it with the /R switch. One typically never runs CHKDSK with /R unless you have a reason to. Aside from taking 2 hours to finish a scan, /R also works the hell out of your drive looking for bad sectors, which is close to pointless if you’re using NTFS in the first place. The only time you would run /R is if your system won’t boot and the recovery console spouts gobberish when you run the DIR command - other than that, just leave it alone. The “proper” command is CHKDSK /F, although with NTFS there’s really no need to ever run a CHKDSK unless something odd like a power failure happens.
It sounds as if you ran CHKDSK via the Windows system GUI. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, I always prefer using the command-line (Start > Run > cmd+ENTER > CHKDSK X: /F). You can always get more information at the command-line via CHKDSK /?
You sound as if you might be a newbie to the NT line. Windows NT (and, by extension, Windows 2000, Windiows XP and Windows Vista) might look a lot Windows 98 or Windows ME, but under the hood NT is like are much more like VMS or BSD than DOS.
Hmm…I don’t see anything relating to chkdsk in the Event Viewer, at least it’s not labeled as such…I do see a HUGE number of “error” messages around 1:15 p.m. (which I’m pretty sure was during the check of the D: drive) yesterday, related to some service called “DCOM” – what on earth is that about??
This is true…of course I’ve been using Microsoft products all my life and still feel like a newbie sometimes; Windoze is not known for being intuitive or user-friendly!
Thanks for the info regarding NTFS; didn’t know it was so robust compared to FAT32, which tends to corrupt itself if you sneeze anywhere near it.
Had to look this one up to know what you’re talking about. It’s true, I don’t normally scan for bad sectors unless there’s obviously a disk problem…OR if it’s a brand new drive and I’ve been having bizarreproblemslately. There’s probably nothing wrong, but it’s a good thing to rule out…
Had to look this one up to know what you’re talking about. It’s true, I don’t normally scan for bad sectors unless there’s obviously a disk problem…OR if it’s a brand new drive and I’ve been having bizarreproblemslately. There’s probably nothing wrong with the disc itself, but it’s a good thing to rule out…
Well, nothing about chkdsk (it’ll be labelled as “autochk” in Event Viewer - sorry, I shoulda mentioned that) in Event Viewer is a good thing. IIRC, if the check comes up clean, nothing is logged. I have personally read EVT error messages about bad sectors, etc., so if you see nothing, you’re good.
DCOM is “a set of Microsoft concepts and program interfaces in which client program objects can request services from server program objects on other computers in a network”. It’s used by a lot of programs - as well as Windows itself - so without any further info, I won’t be able to help. BTW - that definition of DCOM was provided by http://whatis.techtarget.com/ - one of the handiest web sites in existence, IMHO. Although I’ve been in the tech support racket for 8 years now, I still come across new terminology, or find myself in a situation of trying to fix some arcane issue with a database… whatis.com is a huge help!
Well, actually… I’d say that Windows is known for being user-friendly, at least much more so that most versions of Linux. Part of that comes from people being familiar with Windows, but still… I’ve had to teach my Mom about using Windows and still prefer that ANY FREAKIN’ DAY over trying to teach her Gentoo Linux.
Having said that, I’ve occasionally screwed up and run CHKDSK /R at client sites myself. While it’s good for me - hey, I bill by the hour! - it’s annoying to waste all that time. 99.99% of the time you can just stop it without issue, but I just know that I one time I do it’ll crash a client’s server - and not the part-time intern’s PC. :smack:
Oh yeah. NTFS is light-years ahead of FAT/FAT32. I could fill a couple of books about why that is, but for the 50¢ summary, check the NTFS entry at whatis.
