It sounds like you are having some form of Boot record problems.  You may want to try a "Fixmbr" to recreate the master boot record.

You may want to backup your data by plugigng your drive into another machine and setting is as the slave drive.  Then copying files over to another drive.  Fixmbr sometimes solves the problem... othertimes it does not.

You may also want to try a reinstallation of Windows XP over the top (replaces system files)

Thanks Rob. I appreciate your efforts for helping me out. Please post the links once you find them.

I will check the log and see if there is anything I can make out of it.

geearrkay.

 

 

The behavior of CHKDSK you are describing is perfectly normal. The explanation is complicated, so I'll just post some links for you to ckeck out. After you've run chkdsk /f and restarted, go to start-control panel-admin tools- event viewer. In the left pane click application. In the right pane right click the most recent winlogon and select properties. You will be able to see the corrective action windows took when you restarted.

This should help clarify:

http://webspiffy.com/archives/2002/08/ntfs_file_system_glitch/

Also, see this thread:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=100013&highlight=chkdsk#M100013

Rob

 

Message Edited by robnalex on 01-16-2004 04:43 PM

Previous message above has been edited to include one excellent link and the link to the forum thread where I found it.

Rob

Message Edited by robnalex on 01-16-2004 04:46 PM

Thanks JRosenfield for your information. Inputs from both you and Rob make me feel better and stop worrying about this and carry on with my work.

Do you know if there is any tool to continuously monitor the state of Harddisk and report if there is something wrong going on or the disk to going to fail and info like that.

 

Although about new switch commands for chkdsk, this article includes a good description of what it does:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314835&Product=winxp

it also says that chkdsk /r implies (i.e. includes) chkdsk /f

It is quite usual to find that chkdsk finds and fixes minor inconsistencies in the indexes; I think that they often relate to files that have been deleted, but are stuill recorded in the NTFS indexes. Anyway it is not a problem.

That's what I expect it to be. But do you have any idea why these inconsistencies occur in the NTFS filesystem ? I don't have any clue what's happening.

geearrkay-

The log you posted indicates that windows did its job when you restarted. There is nothing in your log any different than what I see when I run chkdsk, nor is there anything to indicate a problem with your hard drive. If you want to be sure, boot from the Dell Diagnostic Tools CD and run a test on the disk.

Check the link I added to my previous post above. I think that will help you understand better what's happening with chkdsk.

I got very obsessed with this whole chkdsk deal a while back and found it next to impossible to get any good explanation, even from Microsoft, as to why chkdsk keeps indicating 'problems'. Actually, there is NO problem.

I hope this helps.

Rob

The following is from a post by Mike Steinbaugh at Webspiffy.com:

http://webspiffy.com/archives/2002/08/ntfs_file_system_glitch/

This problem occurs because when Chkdsk is run against an NTFS volume, Chkdsk.exe may report that security descriptors are in the database that are no longer referenced by any file or folder, and that it is removing them. However, Chkdsk.exe just reclaims the unused security descriptors as a housekeeping activity, and is not actually fixing any kind of problem.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Windows. Fortunately, this error message is an informational message, and can be safely ignored.

All NTFS volumes contain a security descriptor database. This database is populated with security identifiers that represent unique permission settings applied to files and folders. When files or folders have unique NTFS permissions applied, NTFS stores a unique security descriptor once on the volume, and also stores a pointer to the security descriptor on any file or folder that references it.

If files or folders no longer use that unique security descriptor, NTFS does not remove the unique security descriptor from the database, but instead, keeps it cached. Like any caching strategy, you want to keep the cached information as long as possible because it may be used again.

To determine if more serious problems exist before scheduling or running Chkdsk.exe with the /f switch, run the "chkntfs :" (without
the quotation marks) command, where is the drive letter of the drive you want to run the "chkdsk /f" (without the quotation marks) command against. If this command reports that the "dirty bit" is set, there may be real damage that needs to be fixed.