Chkdsk destroys W2K installation
- From: Casian Moscovici <casian@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 20:38:47 -0500
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 .
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