System Freezes During Hard Drive Error Checking

Hello, I have tried to run "Error Checking" on my Windows Vista Laptop (used
to be called "Scan Disk" in the older Windows versions). For whatever reason,
the system freezes up on Stage 5 of 5 when the checking is 71% complete. I
tried doing this several times and it always stops at the 71% point. I have
to manually turn off the computer. Can anyone suggest what might be wrong
here and how I go about fixing it? Thanks in advnace.

Hi Frank,

Why were you running it?
Did disk activity actually stop?

Sometimes it appears to hang at a certain percentage but it's actually still
working. Keep in mind tha the percent figure is just an estimate of
progress, not a hard and fast figure.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"Frank" <> wrote in message
news:9E1A5932-CB50-46AE-827C-...
> Hello, I have tried to run "Error Checking" on my Windows Vista Laptop
> (used
> to be called "Scan Disk" in the older Windows versions). For whatever
> reason,
> the system freezes up on Stage 5 of 5 when the checking is 71% complete. I
> tried doing this several times and it always stops at the 71% point. I
> have
> to manually turn off the computer. Can anyone suggest what might be wrong
> here and how I go about fixing it? Thanks in advnace.

Hello Rick - to answer some of your questions..

(1) I run disk error checks all the time on my computers because I thought
this was part of the standard maintenance steps that users should perform. I
try to keep my computers running error free.

(2) It appeared to me that disk activity actually stopped at 71% on Stage 5
of 5. The reason I say that is that to the right of the percentage you can
actially see the number of files being checked and it was not moving. I let
the system sit idle like that for almost 2 hours and still nothing moved, so
I manually shut it down.

So where do I go from here? Do you think something is wrong because it did
not complete Stge 5. The laptop is only 4 weeks old!

"Rick Rogers" wrote:

> Hi Frank,
>
> Why were you running it?
> Did disk activity actually stop?
>
> Sometimes it appears to hang at a certain percentage but it's actually still
> working. Keep in mind tha the percent figure is just an estimate of
> progress, not a hard and fast figure.
>
> --
> Best of Luck,
>
> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
> My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
>
> "Frank" <> wrote in message
> news:9E1A5932-CB50-46AE-827C-...
> > Hello, I have tried to run "Error Checking" on my Windows Vista Laptop
> > (used
> > to be called "Scan Disk" in the older Windows versions). For whatever
> > reason,
> > the system freezes up on Stage 5 of 5 when the checking is 71% complete. I
> > tried doing this several times and it always stops at the 71% point. I
> > have
> > to manually turn off the computer. Can anyone suggest what might be wrong
> > here and how I go about fixing it? Thanks in advnace.
>
>

Hi,

I wouldn't run error checking as part of normal maintenance, but there's no
saying you can't. I suspect it's hanging on a file, but as to whether or not
there is actual damage you should run a drive diagnostic tool. These are
commonly available for free from the system or drive manufacturer and run
from bootable media.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"Frank" <> wrote in message
news:20D1273D-9C95-43A9-8E1C-...
> Hello Rick - to answer some of your questions..
>
> (1) I run disk error checks all the time on my computers because I thought
> this was part of the standard maintenance steps that users should perform.
> I
> try to keep my computers running error free.
>
> (2) It appeared to me that disk activity actually stopped at 71% on Stage
> 5
> of 5. The reason I say that is that to the right of the percentage you can
> actially see the number of files being checked and it was not moving. I
> let
> the system sit idle like that for almost 2 hours and still nothing moved,
> so
> I manually shut it down.
>
> So where do I go from here? Do you think something is wrong because it did
> not complete Stge 5. The laptop is only 4 weeks old!
>
> "Rick Rogers" wrote:
>
>> Hi Frank,
>>
>> Why were you running it?
>> Did disk activity actually stop?
>>
>> Sometimes it appears to hang at a certain percentage but it's actually
>> still
>> working. Keep in mind tha the percent figure is just an estimate of
>> progress, not a hard and fast figure.
>>
>> --
>> Best of Luck,
>>
>> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
>> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
>> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
>> My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
>>
>> "Frank" <> wrote in message
>> news:9E1A5932-CB50-46AE-827C-...
>> > Hello, I have tried to run "Error Checking" on my Windows Vista Laptop
>> > (used
>> > to be called "Scan Disk" in the older Windows versions). For whatever
>> > reason,
>> > the system freezes up on Stage 5 of 5 when the checking is 71%
>> > complete. I
>> > tried doing this several times and it always stops at the 71% point. I
>> > have
>> > to manually turn off the computer. Can anyone suggest what might be
>> > wrong
>> > here and how I go about fixing it? Thanks in advnace.
>>
>>

I am having a very similar issue to Frank's. I've used PCs forever and
consider myself good at this stuff, but I'm stumped.

After using a new T61 laptop with no issues for a couple of weeks, I started
getting intermittent lock-ups. Wondering if it was related to the disk, I ran
the complete disk check (with surface scan). It always freezes about 80% of
the way through the free space scan. It's always on a slightly different
cluster number, but very close. Like Frank, I leave it for hours to verify
that progress really has stopped. At that point it only responds to turning
off the power.

Other things I've done:
- Run all the PC Doctor tests (a bunch of hardware tests that came
preinstalled) - passed both when running from boot and running under Vista
- Run a memory tester from Microsoft all night long - no lock up
- Installed utilities to monitor CPU and other temperaturs - no heat problems
- Run a drive fitness testing utility from the drive's manufacturer
(Hitachi) - no errors

I'm just about out of ideas. It will freeze at 80% of the way through that
disk check every time, and I'm wondering if that is related to the lock-ups
I've been getting.

I can't afford freezes up in the middle taking notes in a lecture (the
machine's main use), but it did happen at least once a day for several days
last week.

On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:33:20 -0700, Chad
<> wrote:

>I am having a very similar issue to Frank's. I've used PCs forever and
>consider myself good at this stuff, but I'm stumped.

Well, if you consider yourself "good" at this stuff, stop being in
denial. If you run a full surface scan repeatedly and it freezes
around the same spot over and over that should be telling you several
clusters are messed up or at least the File System thinks they are.
Did you run with automatically fix errors turned on?

Surprise, Windows under NTFS is actually pretty good at repairing
common file system errors, but you do need to tell it to fix them
during the scan, otherwise it just reports it found errors. If it can
it uses the brute force method and just marks "bad" sectors and
doesn't use them after moving what it can out of them. You'll see a
summary at the end of any scan disk operation. You should always run
with auto fix turned on.

If you truly have "bad" sectors, ie, something physically wrong with
the disk platters themselves, not just the file system it should again
mark them then skip over them.

One way to know a hard drive is "dying" is it gets an increasing
number of hard errors. This may or may not be accompanied by your
drive starting to make sounds it didn't before. Could be a radical
change or something very subtle like a change in pitch or how loud
your drive is. You can try to "fix" a hard drive or confirm it is
going bad by using a utility from your particular drive maker, like
Seagate. Aside from that things like Spinrite may fix it, but you're
probably better off just recovering what you can from the drive and
replacing it. All hard drives fail sooner or later, often with
absolutely no warning at all which is why backup is so important.

A truly "dead" drive is one that no longer spins up or lost the
ability to accurately control the read/write heads. There's really
nothing practical you can do if something on the circuit board gave up
the ghost or one of the mechanical parts like the motor gave out. More
often the read/write heads drift out of alignment with the main
symptom the drive talking longer and longer to access files or not
being able to at all. That's where something like Spinrite might help.

If your laptop is new, take advantage of your warranty.

>After using a new T61 laptop with no issues for a couple of weeks, I started
>getting intermittent lock-ups. Wondering if it was related to the disk, I ran
>the complete disk check (with surface scan). It always freezes about 80% of
>the way through the free space scan. It's always on a slightly different
>cluster number, but very close. Like Frank, I leave it for hours to verify
>that progress really has stopped. At that point it only responds to turning
>off the power.
>
>Other things I've done:
>- Run all the PC Doctor tests (a bunch of hardware tests that came
>preinstalled) - passed both when running from boot and running under Vista
>- Run a memory tester from Microsoft all night long - no lock up
>- Installed utilities to monitor CPU and other temperaturs - no heat problems
>- Run a drive fitness testing utility from the drive's manufacturer
>(Hitachi) - no errors
>
>I'm just about out of ideas. It will freeze at 80% of the way through that
>disk check every time, and I'm wondering if that is related to the lock-ups
>I've been getting.
>
>I can't afford freezes up in the middle taking notes in a lecture (the
>machine's main use), but it did happen at least once a day for several days
>last week.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Yes, I'm running it with automatically fix errors turned on.

I fully expect chkdsk to identify bad sectors and mark them as unusable,
then move on. What's got me stumped it that it's NOT doing that. The system
just freezes at about the same point during the free space part of the scan
(step 5 of 5). That really doesn't tell me what's going on.

If that tells me, as you say, that "several clusters are messed up or at
least the File System thinks they are," how would I fix that? Chkdsk won't
more beyond that point!

As for taking advantage of the warranty, (a) I like to have some idea what
the problem is before I compain, and, related, (b) I can't really afford to
be without the machine for a long time, so if I can prove that is it the
drive (as opposed to the controller on the motherboard overheating or
something like that), then maybe I can convince a repair place to just swap
the drive instead of leaving or sending the whole machine someone for days or
weeks.

So, can you or anyone else out there elaborate on what the system looking up
during stage 5 might mean?

Since this is the free space scan part of the check, what has the file
system got to do with anything?

On, one more question: Does dskchk attempt to write to every sector, or just
read from each one? I'm trying to figure out why it passed the surface scan
in the BIOS, the surface scan in PC Doctor, and the surface scan in the
Hitachi drive diagnostic utility, but it dies during the Dskchk? Does this
point to a file system thing then? And if so, how to fix it?

In article <EECD0C1E-D031-4CE1-84B6->,
Chad <> wrote:
>I fully expect chkdsk to identify bad sectors and mark them as unusable,
>then move on. What's got me stumped it that it's NOT doing that. The system

chkdsk /r /p

Huh?

Invalid parameter - /p

"the wharf rat" wrote:

> In article <EECD0C1E-D031-4CE1-84B6->,
> Chad <> wrote:
> >I fully expect chkdsk to identify bad sectors and mark them as unusable,
> >then move on. What's got me stumped it that it's NOT doing that. The system
>
> chkdsk /r /p
>
>
>

On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 11:49:00 -0700, Chad
<> wrote:

>Huh?
>
>Invalid parameter - /p
>
>"the wharf rat" wrote:
>
>> In article <EECD0C1E-D031-4CE1-84B6->,
>> Chad <> wrote:
>> >I fully expect chkdsk to identify bad sectors and mark them as unusable,
>> >then move on. What's got me stumped it that it's NOT doing that. The system
>>
>> chkdsk /r /p
>>

The P switch is not needed. All you need is the R switch. Regardless
it assumes you're running from the command prompt, which isn't
necessary.

You haven't said WHY you're doing a surface scan. In 99 out of 100
times it isn't necessary and just slows things way down.

Have you just run with auto repair set to see if it gets through?
That's all I ever do and it works the vast majority of the times. It
never takes more than a few minutes and often will find and repair
file system errors.

If you're running Vista, and you're doing the C drive and Vista is
installed on this drive, it will be locked and you can't do it. Vista
will tell you that, ask if you want to schedule it. Are you doing it
this way? If not, do it this way. It is what Microsoft's software
engineers designed into the system. It is one of the few things in
Windows that DOES work the majority of times.