chkdsk problems.... vista

Hi there.

I have a Toshiba Satelite laptop, running the 32 bit vista version. Three days ago a message balloon popped up just above the clock. It read something about one of the Toshiba files being corrupted, and requiring a chkdsk to be run. I went ahead and ran the program.

Now when I start windows, the loading screen (with the progress bar) comes up, but then I get a blue warning screen almost every other load. the screen isn't up long enough to get all the information off of it. I am then re-directed to a black screen with two options
1)repair windows
2)start windows normally.

First time 'round, I went with repair windows. After trying to fix the problem, it tells me windows cannot be fixed. I then proceed to a system restore from save point. I get the ok, computer restarts itself, and then.........
A black screen. I even left it like that for 24 hours to see if it was just having troubles booting.

I have no idea what to try next. I have a few thousand photographs on that drive that I need to save. My external drive died and I haven't had a chance to get a new one.

Can anyone shed some light?

Thanks, and sorry if that was long winded!

 

Have you attempted to boot into safe mode or windows normally? The repair function for Vista is very limited and in my opinion, severely lacking. If you cannot get windows to boot up, download a linux live cd (I prefer Knoppix) and burn the files to disk, copy them to a USB drive, or go get a cheap external and copy the files there.

 

Yes, I have tried safe mode. I still only get the black screen. I've also tried loading with the settings from the last successful start up.

I've even tried these unplug the battery, jump up and down, count backwards from 10 while sacrificing a pigeon.

Can nothing appease the Microsoft overlords?

 

Sounds like live cd time. From the sounds of your situation, you have met all the prerequisites to run such a virtual operating system cd. You basically need a screen, mouse/keyboard, ram, and then the media (your hdd) that you want to access to recover information. It is perfectly safe as long as you do not delete/format anything. Go here: www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html , download and burn the ISO to cd. Boot into BIOS and may sure that cd is set to the number 1 boot spot, save, then insert the cd and power on. Allow it to load and it should show your partitions of your current hard drive on its desktop.

On a humorous note: I think that you may have got the order inverted. I thought it was down then up? Not sure

Best of luck!

 

We need the blue screen info

It sounds like it "sometimes" loads.

Ok,

START > right click COMPUTER, choose PROPERTIES, on the window that appears, choose ADVANCED SYSTEM SETTINGS, on the window that appears, choose the ADVANCED tab, then choose the SETTINGS button under STARTUP AND RECOVERY SECTION,

Uncheck AUTOMATICALLY RESTART.

Next time the blue screen appears, you will receive a blue screen and it will stay.

OR

on the menu that appears, press f8 and choose DISABLE AUTO RESTART and Next time the blue screen appears, you will receive a blue screen and it will stay.

 

I can put up the blue screen info......

 

then do so

 

had to get it. And I can't get into windows to click the start menu....
here's the info



A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed, if this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows updates you might need.

If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select advanced startup options, and then select safemode.

technical information:

*** STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x93EE1B00, 0X93EE1C4C, 0X88082430)

collecting data for crash dump...
intializing disk for crash dump ...
Begining dump of physical memory
Dumping physical memory to disk: 100

 

you don't need to get into windows to disable the autorestart...just tap f8 while booting...well,never mind

That is an extraordinarily rare error and there doesn't seem to be any single cause.

When you ran chkdsk, which switch did you use? /f? or /r?

I'd try again with the /r switch, then check the wininit entry under EVENT VIEWER > APPLICATIONS and see what it found

 

How do I go about getting into chkdsk and changing it to /r?

 

CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]]

 

Press the START ORB, type
cmd
in the search box on the bottom....wait a second or two and you will see CMD in the search box at the top.

Right click, choose RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR, a command line box will open

type

chkdsk /r
< enter >

say yes to do at reboot and reboot

Take a long walk as this will take a loooooon time