Strange situation with my W7

learninmypc

Posts: 9,679   +724
I had my 465 gb USB harddrive plugged in to my W7 to move some tunes from my music library to the harddrive. That successfully completed an hour or so ago.
I just tried to use the safe to remove feature to remove it & wouldn't do such after a couple times so I figured I'd shut it down & remove it that way like I've done in the past.
I shut it down, waited 30-40 seconds & pushed the start button. Everything went fine except the speaker had a red X on it so I tried to fix it by clicking it but couldn't remember how I fixed it the first time so I thought a reboot might fix it.
I have no way to show a screen print on it, but it did say something about doing a mini dump. Bad-Pool ?? something & alot of white print on a blue screen.
I sat here waiting for it to reboot by its self but it didn't so I pushed the power button on the power strip & it shut down. I waited another 35 some seconds & powered it back up, fingers crossed.
It came back up with a box on the desktop saying something like Windows either didn't shutdown or start up correctly & it asked me if I wanted to check online for a solution. I clicked the yes button but still no answer
I have no back up pc so I don't know what to do. The red x is gone so I'm guessing I have sound again.
"edit" I do have sound & I found the mini dump folder, empty.
 
Did it say bad pool header? This could possibly mean ,Bad ram or a bad driver . It also could have been cause when the system restarted. It did not load its drivers and programs right at boot up. Is it running fine now? If windows did not answer you with a solution. They most likely have one at this time.
 
Not positive, but it could of been bad pool header. I haven't rebooted it since, but otherwise it is running fine.
I'm still trying to break my reboot often habit.
 
That could have been the problem. You shut it down then tried to reboot it to fast. In turn it did not load its drivers properly.
 
You would be wise to run a full chkdsk on your USB drive (and your main HDD for good measure). Any failure during 'safe to remove' is liable to generate the odd fault in the NTFS system. IMHO it is best to set up USB drives as uncached. That is to say select 'quick removal' in the drive properties policy tab. You take a small performance hit, but you won't notice it in everyday use. What you gain is safety for your USB drive whether or not you remember to select safe remove.
 
Ok, how do I do such on my USB 465 gb Verbatim Harddrive? I could probably find out how to by exploring this pc, but .....:) I'll look while I'm waiting for the answer.
Ok, going a similiar path to do a disk clean up on my harddrive, I simply put the USB Drive letter in & this is where I am now
Disk Cleanup.jpg
I put the check mark in the Old Check Disk files. Is that correct? I hope so because I just clicked OK & it took a few seconds. Now to my pc Harddrive.
"EDIT" I ran a check disk on my USB harddrive it came up good.
It tells me it can't do a check disk on my pc harddrive while its running & asked if I wanted to do a boot time scan yet I saw no way of doing such on that box so I will check else where, thank you.
 
I had problem yesterday with red x after using my usb ports had it few times b4 but after couple of restars it was fine again its just a shut down problem restart few times it should be fine
 
The first time it happened to me, I really don't remember if fixed it with a reboot or not. Just glad to have my sound back.:)
 
You would be wise to run a full chkdsk on your USB drive (and your main HDD for good measure). Any failure during 'safe to remove' is liable to generate the odd fault in the NTFS system. IMHO it is best to set up USB drives as uncached. That is to say select 'quick removal' in the drive properties policy tab. You take a small performance hit, but you won't notice it in everyday use. What you gain is safety for your USB drive whether or not you remember to select safe remove.
Ok, I just rebooted & it did a check disk on boot up & it looked good to this untrained eye. I thank you & I'm guessing I'm good to go.(y)
 
Simply the fact that your 'disc clean' of the USB drive showed some chkdsk fragments - 64Kb - says you have had a problem on that drive. You have irretrievably lost some data. Maybe you know what it was, maybe you don't. The USB drive has performed a chkdsk for itself at some time, but you absolutely must do another now.

You need to learn how to run chkdsk. It's just a right click for properties, then tools, check this drive for errors. If you have that drive open in windows explorer then, like for a C: drive, it is already in use. Instead select it in administrative tools, computer management, storage, disk management.

For the C: drive, it is impossible to select it for exclusive use, because windows OS is always running from it. That is why the only effective way is to do a boot time scan, as it told you. You can do just a check however, without being able to actually repair anything. If no errors are reported, you obviously don't need a boot-time repair.
 
Althogh I've not had much if any problems that I'm aware of, any data I've lost on it would be from my previous pc which is no longer in use. I'm running another chkdik on the Verbatim right now.
I thank you. This is answering questions I've wanted to know.
 
One last question, I hope. I noticed my pc's harddrive (1 terabyte) is scheduled to be defragged every Wednesday night @ 1:00am. Is it really necessary to do it once a week, or would once a month be ok? TIA :)
 
If you are not having any slow down problems. Or uninstalling or installing a lot. Once a month should be fine. I have been known to let mine go for 2 months at a time. With know problems.
 
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