Urgent help! Is my HD on its way out?

[ntl customer]

I had a bluescreen the other night (I didn't manage to get the details but I seem to remember it was something_paged_error) but ever since I have been having some odd problems since then. The search thing in XP has hung a number of times when attempting to search for items on the HD.

Edit: The computer had a blue screen whilst defragmenting the hard drive if I remember correctly - don't know whether this helps at all, but I thought I'd add it in.

Today I decided to upgrade to Office 2003 from XP, and so began removing XP and putting on 2003. Midway through the installation process it complained that it couldn't access a certain folder, which I thought was wierd because I was logged on as an administrator. I went to check the folder and upon right clicking on it and trying to select properties I was greeted with the error (see attached file #1) that the file was corrupted and unreadable. Bizzare I thought, so I rebooted and Windows did its checkdisk thing, which I thought was a little odd, seeing as I had no such problems before the bluescreen.

I continued my Office 2003 installation, and that continued successfully this time round without any problems. However when I emptied my temporary internet files earlier tonight I found that my Outlook icons on the desktop and top of start menu went funny (see pic #2) , which was a bit odd since that this was a new installation. I tried the repair icon option in Tweak UI and this didn't do anything. I tried the repair option in Outlook and this didn't fix the missing icon either.

Also whenever I opened up MSN I got a little yellow triangle appear in my tray with notice saying that the MFT was corrupted (see pic 3) and although it logged me in, it hung all the time and I couldn't talk to anyone. So I decided to reboot my computer again, and yet again it did more chkdsking similar to that as described in para. #1

Everything worked fine after that reboot and it was OK. I decided to do a chkdsk in Windows to see what was wrong, and it threw up the following errors. These were similar to those I had got previously.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>chkdsk
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Windows XP (SATA partition 1).

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Deleting index entry board[1] in index $I30 of file 77289.
Deleting index entry BOARD_~1 in index $I30 of file 77289.
Deleting index entry forum.nthellworld.co[1].htm in index $I30 of file 77770.
Deleting index entry FORUMN~1.HTM in index $I30 of file 77770.
Deleting index entry b1[1].php in index $I30 of file 77853.
Deleting index entry B1_1_~1.PHP in index $I30 of file 77853.
Index verification completed.

Errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>chkdsk
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Windows XP (SATA partition 1).

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

30716248 KB total disk space.
26531520 KB in 66575 files.
26860 KB in 4480 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
157900 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
3999968 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
7679062 total allocation units on disk.
999992 allocation units available on disk.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

So, to summarise: -

Is my 6 month old hard disk on its way out?

Is the filesystem screwed on my disk, and could it be anything to do with the fact that I had a blue screen earlier this week? Assuming it is bust, I assmume that deleting and creating large amounts of files (upgrading office, emptying my IE cache) has broken it even more - it seems to be now that when I delete/create large amounts of files the Outlook icon disappears?

Are my files at risk and will it affect other partitions on the drive (or is it just parition c: that has got the hump) ? Drive BTW is a Seagate 200GB SATA model.

Will re installing Windows help, or will it exacerbate the problem?

Does anyone have any other ideas or solutions?

PS - I have had large problems with chkdsk in the past under Windows 2000 when I allowed it to "fix" problems - I ended up having a significant amount of data trashed when it "fixed" a problem after having a power cut.

Help me!!!!

Thanks!

I would back up the whole drive as a precaution if possible,
best case senario is that the forced reboot (from bsod)has corrupted files and not damaged the disk if this is the case a clean install will cure the problem
worst case obviously is that it has damaged the disk,run chkdsk from xp boot cd and check for bad sectors,this will take a long time but it will let you know how much trouble your in
Theres a fair chance its just the filing system and not the drive

Wave bye bye to your file system, it looks to be well on it's way out the door.

Backup any important files, zap (reformat) the disk and re-install. My guess is the crash corrupted the MFT, which is bad, but a reformat and re-install will cure. If you still get problems after this then the HD has booked it's holiday, and you will need a replacement.

[ntl customer]

OK I've got most of my files backed up, but how do I back my settings up?

I don't wish to have to spend hours turning on and off the settings that I want or annoy me respectively. Folder views especially, it took a while of 'training' on Windows to get it to display certain folders how I liked them to be displayed. Are there any programs which will enable me to save and restore settings with a few clicks?

Also I have 3 other partitions on this disk - would they be affected by the MFT problem? I have chkdsk'ed them individually via the command line and they don't seem to be affected at all by the problem on the c: partition. Or would the other partitions be f$cked too if I tried to format the c: partition leading to loss of all data?

Really is sod's law isn't it - I get it all working and it all falls apart!

[Paul K]

Look in accessories, system tools for file and settings transfer wizard, you can back up your settings to disk here and then use it after the clean install to bring all settings back in again.
Only the partition that the MFT relates to would be affected, each partition has it's own table

[greencreeper]

Just run chkdsk /f I've never encountered problems with MFT damage, so my guess would be that, if chkdsk does wreck the drive, then it must have been wrecked to start with. Run chkdsk /f until it comes back clean - though if the disk is pooched, it may never do that.

[ntl customer]

Look in accessories, system tools for file and settings transfer wizard, you can back up your settings to disk here and then use it after the clean install to bring all settings back in again.

Thanks for that. However, the wizard supports only a few programs, not all that I have. Ah well, never mind - looks like a long weekend in store for me.

At least that's a relief that each partition has its own MFT and that my disk was divvied up when I installed Windows.

[ntl customer]

Well I did a reformat with full format of c: and the problem still re appears.

I guess this means that the disk is fudged and that I will need to get a new one?