Filesystem corrupted?

[tmathews]

[This has turned out rather long as I try to anticipate questions. Sorry...]

My system booted fine yesterday afternoon then locked up in the middle of a game and now refuses to boot normally, locking up during Windows load. I'm able to boot into Safe Mode with Networking and a check of the filesystem gives a complaint about the bitmap being incorrect. I've checked the boxes for fix errors and recover bad sectors and this apparently completes normally. But when I check the filesystem again the errors are still there so either it doesn't know how to fix them or isn't writing the corrections.

This is the only disk in the system and it's partitioned into C: (boot) and D: (data) drives. I assume the problem is on the C: partition but I haven't tried deactivating D: to verify this.

The OS is Vista Home Premium 32 SP1. The platform is home-built with an E6300 on an ECS 945G-M3 V3.0 MB with 2x 1GB PC2-5300 RAM. The disk is a Maxtor 200GB PATA (I'll have to update with the exact model # but it's something like 6L200). The power supply is a 350W Fortron (I'll get the model #). I'm using onboard graphics. The system has worked fine for about a year and a half.

The system consistently fails to boot in normal mode and consistently boots successfully in Safe Mode. I ran one pass of memtest86+ (it passed) to rule out some gross memory issue. The disk passes Seagate's short and long diagnostics so I don't think it's a hardware problem with the disk. The consistency of boot failure/success in normal/Safe mode and an unstressed, good-quality power supply makes me think it's not a power problem. It could be a driver problem but no drivers have changed for a few weeks (I look at Microsoft's updates before installing them) so I'm more inclined to believe the file system corruption is responsible for the freezes.

There's nothing critical on the disk, I have a backup from 4 weeks ago, and I believe I can copy off what little "nice-to-have" stuff isn't in the backup. I would rather not use such a big hammer on what seems like a small problem but I can if necessary.

Any suggestions on next steps? My current thought is that I need a better NTFS repair tool than chkdsk -- any recommendations? Am I off chasing the wrong problem?

[not important]

I've had good success fixing Vista problems using a Vista Recovery Disc.
If you have Vista SP1 installed: click on the Start menu, All programs, Maintenance, and Create a Recovery Disc.
If you do NOT have Vista SP1 installed you can download the Vista Recovery file from the PC World site.
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...scription.html

[tmathews]

Given the description at PCWorld's site, I tried the Windows Recovery Environment on my Vista (no-SP) DVD. The automatic repair wizard wasn't able to fix the problem, nor was chkdsk /f able to fix the filesystem. I then tried running Defraggler (built-in Defrag wouldn't run) then chkdsk /f from the Windows Recovery Environment. After this, chkdsk came up clean in Safe Mode with Networking. But an attempt to boot in normal mode still hung during Windows load. So now my guess is some critical file got lost when the filesystem got corrupted.

I'll try the SP1 Vista Recovery Disk in the hope that the SP1 wizard is smarter and/or can better handle a missing file than a corrupted filesystem. Failing that, I'll try an over-the-top reinstall. If that messes things up I'll just give up and restore from the backup and copy back the handful of nice-to-have files and be done with.

Unless someone has a better suggestion?

[Kuch]

I’d recommend just restoring to the backup you have. If you know you won’t lose anything critical, there isn’t much reason to continue working the issue. That’s what we have backups for, right?

[tmathews]

Right. I was hoping to learn a little from this but my wife is getting antsy to get the machine back so I skipped directly to the restore from backups.

Same problem.

Now it can't be a missing file anymore. Should I have reformatted the partition before restoring? I've done a restore only once before when moving to a larger disk, but in that case I created the partition new before restoring. I suppose I should also run an overnight memtest to verify it's not a hardware problem.

Any other suggestions appreciated.

[Kuch]

How about using system restore? Is that option available?

If nothing works, you may just be better wiping the HDD and reloading Vista.

[tmathews]

I tried system restore but that didn't help either. Sigh.

After some more research, it looks like partitioning sets the partition table entry and formatting writes the filesystem control structures at the beginning of the partition. The DriveImageXML FAQs say formatting isn't required for a restore so I gather the filesystem itself is restored along with the data in it. I think you're right about having to reload Vista.

The backups save my data but I was hoping to save myself the hassle of reloading if something went wrong. Apparently my backup system isn't as strong as I had thought. I guess I'll start a new thread about that once I get this resolved.

I'll try the wipe and reload and let you know how it goes. Thanks for the help so far.

[tmathews]

Wiped and reloaded. Had one freeze when I was reloading applications but I'm not sure if it's the same problem. At least there should be fewer variables if it's still (or again) there and I have to debug it.

About the only closure I get is writing this followup to my thread. Beyond the hours to do the reload, it's frustrating not knowing whether the reload has actually fixed the problem. I did end up running memtest86+ for over 12 hours with no errors so at least I'm pretty confident it's not a memory problem. Only time will tell if the problem is gone.