2 other popular reasons for Windows to go the beach

Post #426,397 by scoenye 11/19/18 7:33:21 PM 11/19/18 7:39:59 PM Reply	2 other popular reasons for Windows to go the beach Accumulated NTFS cruft and HDD problems. Windows will accumulate NTFS metadata borkage and over time, that will lead to all kinds of problems. It can also be a sign the HDD is starting to crap out. The HDD hardware will only try to correct problems when the bad sectors are being written to. The Windows area is mostly read-only, so a defect in a non-critical file will let the OS load after umpteen retries. If so, the problem may stick around until the thing finally fails. (Not a certainty by far, but I've dealt with enough cases where a dud HDD was the cause.) Both can be addressed by requesting a CHKDSK C: /F /R scan on reboot from an admin CMD window. (Staging it from Windows Explorer usually does not go Full Monty and will leave the problems unaddressed.) Same CMD window can also be used to check on the HDD SMART status (which may as well be called DUMB status as usually it is the last place for problems to be flagged) FWIW: wmic diskdrive get status Edited by scoenye Nov. 19, 2018, 07:39:59 PM EST Expand All History
Post #426,403 by drook 11/20/18 12:47:36 PM 11/20/18 12:47:36 PM Reply	Details? "... requesting a CHKDSK C: /F /R scan on reboot from an admin CMD window." Does that mean reboot and when it comes up you request that? How do you get an admin CMD window on boot? -- Drew
Post #426,405 by Another Scott 11/20/18 4:22:35 PM 11/20/18 4:22:35 PM Reply	I believe that when you request it, it will say it has to do it on startup.
Post #426,407 by scoenye 11/20/18 6:17:57 PM 11/20/18 6:17:57 PM Reply	Correct Launch CMD from a regular desktop session, but you have to use the "Run as admin" option from the context menu. The boot drive is mounted and that will trigger a "Do you want to schedule this on the next boot?" prompt. Answer Y and reboot. If all goes well, you'll get a "last chance to abort" screen and then CHKDSK will go off to the races. Depending on the size of the HDD and the amount of work needed to piece things back together, it is not unusual for this to take an hour or more. Some laptops also have a non-destructive HDD test in the BIOS. It may be worth looking in to that first. These days the option just exercises the HDD's built-in diagnostics. There's a 2 minute short version which will catch 90% of problems and a long version which will check the entire platter. Run the short test first. If it passes, run the long one. If either fails => time to replace the disk.
Post #426,410 by drook 11/20/18 10:58:17 PM 11/20/18 10:58:18 PM Reply	Thanks, will kick off before bed tonight -- Drew
Post #426,412 by drook 11/21/18 9:10:38 AM 11/21/18 9:10:38 AM Reply	That wasn't what I expected I never even saw a progress bar or spinner. It completed nearly instantly. So quickly, in fact, that I strongly suspect it didn't actually scan anything. Is there any log file I can check to see what it did? -- Drew
Post #426,414 by pwhysall 11/21/18 10:30:01 AM 11/21/18 10:30:01 AM Reply	Re: That wasn't what I expected chkdsk is astonishingly quick on SSDs. https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-find-chkdsk-results-in-windows-10/
Post #426,415 by drook 11/21/18 10:42:02 AM 11/21/18 10:42:02 AM Reply	This isn't SSD -- Drew
Post #426,417 by scoenye 11/21/18 6:37:09 PM 11/21/18 6:37:09 PM Reply	Indeed not It should be pretty obvious. CHKDSK runs before the GUI takes over and the display is a text only frame buffer type. It goes through a number of stages and reports progress along the way. Possible stupid trick : issue CD \ before running the CHKDSK command :-/ https://www.windowsdigital.com/how-to-run-chkdsk-windows-10-cmd-before-boot/
Post #426,420 by drook 11/21/18 11:31:08 PM 11/21/18 11:31:08 PM Reply	Trying again tonight, thanks -- Drew
Post #426,423 by drook 11/22/18 11:39:07 AM 11/22/18 11:39:07 AM Reply	Well, it ran ... Any way to see what it found? -- Drew
Post #426,424 by scoenye 11/22/18 5:24:16 PM 11/22/18 5:24:16 PM Reply	Application event log Look for the wininit and chkdsk event sources
Post #426,428 by pwhysall 11/23/18 3:56:44 AM 11/23/18 3:56:44 AM Reply	Re: Well, it ran ... check the link I gave above
Post #426,429 by drook 11/23/18 10:01:33 AM 11/23/18 10:01:33 AM Reply	Nothing interesting Guess the disk is OK, just bogged down running recent Windows on old hardware. -- Drew

Welcome to IWETHEY!