Chkdsk - "Windows was unable to complete the disk check" stuck on phase 2

I read everything you posted. In both topics you created regarding this issue I might add. And at no point in time does the burden of proof shift nor fall upon anyone who offers you advice. I know of no one here who gets paid to offer advice and therefore only owe courtesy in answering. Nevertheless, as previously stated, my proof is 20 years of experience. That certainly does not mean i know everything nor that I am never wrong. But, repeated failures to complete check disk is a sign the drive needs to be replaced. Plain and simple. Don't worry though.. we'll answer your next post on how to install windows and recover lost data.

I really don't understand the hostility. It's possible that I misread some of your posts - but the impression that I got was that

1. Disk check wasn't completing
2. You were getting file inconsistency errors which indicates a problem with writing to the disk
3. The disk is 5 years old.

Based on these things that you have stated (emphasis on the you have stated) and my own 15 or so years working in IT, I concluded that the disk probably has physical problems preventing it from working properly. We all gave you pretty much the same advice - replace the disk - not because anyone wanted to see you spend money needlessly, but rather because none of us wanted to see you lose your data which I'm sure you will agree would be more catastrophic.

If you want to take your life in your hands so to speak, then so be it. But when you have three or four different techs telling you pretty much the same thing, maybe it's time to just apply occams razor and call it a day.

I am not a computer novice either, yes chkdsk never completed before, however it does now, I have just ran it from windows and it completed the three phases OK, maybe the completed run at startup cleared the problem.
However as I had many years (since I bought the computer) fault free running there seemed to me there was nothing wrong with the drive and I am more convinced of that now.
As far as I am concerned the drive is in first class condition.
Just because I ask a question here does not mean I am not able to restored data or reinstall windows, however I do not expect to be doing either in the foreseeable future.

The simplest explanation from years of fault free running was that my drive is fine and that is the one I applied. You all seem to have ignored the fact that the drive had been otherwise fault free and you either have to have a lot of money or be extremely cautions to get a new drive under those circumstances, however I appreciated the advice offered even if I chose not to take it on this occasion.
Maybe I will be back here next week asking for advice on how to recover from a failed drive but it is a chance I am willing to take.

Actually I am considering doing a similar thing, ie making a backup of my main drive onto my larger second drive so I can swop them over
to make better use of the larger drive and also have a bootable backup in the event of drive failure.
I did do this on my old computer but was told it would be harder to do with windows XP, I guess I will find that out if I have a go at doing it.

Now you're talking the right language. When dealing with hard drives, whether the data is critical or just a few pictures you'd soon not loose, it's a prerequisite to back it up. I recommend Acronis image clone. Easeus ToDo is also good and is completely free. Each of these software create images of your partition allowing you to burn them later.

You may find the information on the link below helpful in the future.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx?mfr=true

I wish you good fortune with your drive.


Regards,
Joel

Take the HDD out and stick into another system with the same OS and run the CHKDSK /F on it and see if you can get pass the stage your stuck on. That other system HDD Controller might be acting up on you causing the scan to get stuck at random spots. I won't stick with one system if it's acting up. Need to move on to another system to test the drive on.

If you don't want to take out the unit you can run IOBIT Disk Doctor through XP up to Windows 7 and let it scan for errors/fix them. HD Tune is another one you can use under Windows on that HDD.

Well I only have one system (that would support a drive of that size).
It has got past stage 2 and completed through stage 3 now.
Not sure why it did no do that before, maybe it was because I was running other
stuff (surfing) at the time, probably not too surprising really.
It may also have been that deleting a lot of temporary files helped, that would certainly
have seeded things up.
Also I have a dual core processor now (X2 3800 as opposed to a Sempron 3000) so if
it was taking 3 times longer to run before it may have looked like it had got stuck when in reality it just needed more time.
I may try some of those utilities some time when I do not require my computer so much for other things, so thanks.

Sounds like you had way to many lost or bad clusters on the HDD. Sounds like your all set now.

Yes well I was getting a lot of reboots due to having a stick of bad memeory inso I would expect some problems from that.
Maybe I had other (very minor) issues in the past when chkdsk would not run, however it
I did have to power off hard reboot it never ran chkdsk at start-up before.

I am not sure if I had lost or bad clusters, the errors I reported here were such as:-

"Index entry PPC047~1.JPG of index $I30 in file 0x37c4d points to unused file 0x2157c."

I think these were just caused by bad memory, not a bad drive.

eg
0 KB in bad sectors.

Sounds promising!!

I wish the new memory I got was in as good shape as my drive, that memory has caused me so much grief (still have to get a refund yet).

So that's another issue isn't it? Your 'brand new drive' which you got at a great price on ebay may turn out to be in worse shape than the drive you just slung in the bin!! :haha:

That's not far off my memory buying experience!

However I was just increasing my memory with another 1 gig, the existing memory, which
I have put back in is running fine!! (touch wood )

Bad memory then the OS would swap memory to VRM (HDD) instead. This all gets so complex. So then you get bad index (clusters called differently on other software fixers) but in all now you know. I had the same thing happen last week. It was the PSU keep dropping the system and then the OS dump memory chunks to the VRM (HDD) so then the HDD won't boot into the OS. Caused the OS to load a startup repairer. In all everything works here. This is the only method available.