re: CHKDSK won't run to completion
Monday, July 28, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by C K
(6117 messages posted)
Head crashes can happen when powered down improperly, especially when a write or
read is taking place. Disabling the disk cache can help reduce data corruption but
that only helps reduce it, not eleminate it and IME when NTFS gets corrupted past
it's built-in protections, it is usually much more difficult to recover/fix then
FAT. Although newer hard drives are supposed to be more immune to that, it happens
all to often as any recovery lab will tell you. That can and does end up being physical
damage that chkdsk was never designed to handle. At this point, you aren't sure
why the utility is canceling the check if you don't have the expertise or knowledge
of how to troubleshoot it properly. IME, chkdsk can't handle what it is encountering
and is canceling. It won't tell you why because it doesn't know and neither does
Windows. The closest you will get is the Event Viewer if you are lucky for any error
messages pertaining to the drive or issues on/with it. I wouldn't suspect corruption
of the chkdsk file itself or it wouldn't start at all, and if it did, it would error
immediately before even starting to check the disk. In that case, it is designed
to give an you error message which would refer to errors in the code.
If I were working on the machine, I do have the experience and other software tools
to determine what is going on, but even then it can take some time to determine the
cause or causes. Usually there are more than one. The tools I use aren't available
to the public and are expensive, but it's the only way to work at low levels to determine
the causes of disk or data failures. Outside of that, you have to relay on the utilities
preprogrammed error messages for what it was designed to do when issues arise that
it CAN take care of. When it can't complete and isn't programmed to handle errors
or issues it comes across, it usually will just exit with or without a message.
Computers are dumb and so is code. MS never intended it to take the place of other
more comprehensive utilities in use by professionals who can delve deeper into problems
and their causes.
If the program writers aren't continuely updating to handle new problems and bugs
as reported from the field, then you don't have code that can truely help you the
user in determing what issue you are dealing with and whether it can be fixed (and
MS certianly isn't doing it to chkdsk for the most part).
Bottom line, many formatting, TOC and file system issues can't be fixed or fixed
easily. If they could on a single disk, we would never had to invent redundant RAID
systems for a better recover/repair solution. So when disks can't be (easliy) fixed
(IE no good backup data available), we end up reformatting and reinstalling if the
hardware hasn't been damaged. Just no way around it sometimes. :-(
On Monday, July 28, 2008 at 6:54 pm, David Bookbinder wrote:
>The message is odd. Initially, I get the usual CHKDSK is starting message, then
after
>a few seconds I get the message telling me that CHKDSK has been cancelled -- as
if
>I had pressed the ESC key to cancel it, though I did not touch the keyboard (or
mouse).
>Very strange. It's not that CHKDSK stops because it can't figure out what to do,
>or that it crashes. It somehow gets the signal that it has been cancelled.
>
>
>
|
All messages in this thread [show all]
 | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | re: CHKDSK won't run to completion (C K: Mon, Jul 28, 2008, 7:11 pm) |
| |
| |
Return to the Windows XP Discussion Forum
|
|
