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[OldTimer]

A friend of mine rang me today in a bit of a panic. He had a message come up on screen which said:

Windows detected a hard drive problem

Back Up files immediately to prevent information loss, and then contact the computer manufacturer to determine if you need to repair or replace the disk.

Volume C:\:\

Disk Name Toshiba MK25659SXV

I went over to see him, and amongst other things we ran a full disk check (CHKDSK) routine. It took ages to run, but at the end of it all it reported no disk errors, and said that "The Volume is Clean".

When he rang me, I was a little anxious lest it was a piece of adware that may have produced the error message. I have to admit that his laptop runs really slow. We had a bit of a tidy up whilst I was there, downloading CCleaner, and then deleting months accumulated temporary files, cookies, etc..., but it still runs unusually slow.

Having spent several hours with him, I need to go over again, and try a few more things, but as I said the CHKDSK routine reported no errors, said that the Volume was clean, so where do we go from here? His computer reports that he has about 70% free space on his HD, so that appears not to be  an issue.

Is there anything else we can run to see whether the Disk Error Message is genuine?

Regards,

Alan

[burakkucat]

A quick query from me, before I "bow out" and let those experts with the BGW OS assist . . .

Did you perform disk checks on both C:\ and D:\?

Looking at the line of the message beginning "Volume", I read the latter part as "C:\; D:\"  (One space inserted so that the characters are not interpreted to show an emoticon.)

[sheddyian]

If it was me, I'd do the following :

Open Windows Explorer and note what hard disks actually exist in the system (ie are there drives c: and d: ?)

Open a command prompt with admin privilege (to do this, click the start button, type CMD and you should see CMD appear at the top - RIGHT click on this, and choose "run as administrator").

In your "DOS" window you can now run CHKDSK as follows :

CHKDSK C: /F /R
it will complain the disk is in use, and ask if you want to run it at startup.  Answer Y to this.

If you have other disks on the system, issue the same command for those disks too, ie

CHKDSK D: /F /R

/F means "actually fix it, don't just check it" and /R means check the whole disk for bad clusters.

Reboot the computer and it will start doing it's checks.
This can take several hours!

When it eventually reboots and starts up again, you can look in the event viewer and see what the outome was.

OR you can open a privileged CMD window again, and just type
CHKDSK C:

and look for a line reporting how many bad clusters the disk has. 

Once Windows has logged them on the disk, you're safe (ish) but having more than 0 bad clusters is an indication that the disk might be having problems.

Ian

[Berrick]

From experience if the message

Windows detected a hard drive problem

is appearing frequently and the computer is running

but it still runs unusually slow

and after doing as Sheddyian suggested and you have run sfc /scannow from the commandline you still suffer these symptoms, I would suggest that the hard disk is failing and should be replaced. This error is usually trapped by the Operating system if the disk can not repair the error.

I have had computers displaying these kinds of symptoms and running the manufactures diagnostics have reported no error. Only on running the manufactures extend diagnostics, which are invariably destructive (ie all data is over written), have they reported error codes which when looked up just state "replace drive"

Just to clarify if you are receiving this message frequently after doing the above I would replace the hard disk.

[roseway]

If the hard disk has SMART enabled then you could use a SMART monitoring utility to give a non-destructive assessment of the state of the drive.

e.g. http://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/

[HPsauce]

You may also need to enable SMART in the BIOS.
Some BIOS versions actually report on SMART during boot, so you may see a "SMART enabled" message (or similar) flash briefly.

I think the key point is that Windows does not produce such messages lightly; it's probably having problems with a  critical, heavily-used system area so could go bang at any time!

[OldTimer]

Hello all,

Many, many thanks for your several helpful replies and suggestions.

I have spoken with my friend about what has been suggested, and hope to go over and see him again early this week, maybe even tomorrow.

BTW we only ran the checks on drive C, so will make sure to do C & D next time

Oops, sorry Burakkucat, the emoticon was the result of a typo on my part 

I will get back once we have run the additional tests.

Regards,

Alan

[OldTimer]

Hello again,

Here are the results of today's CHKDSK on C: and D: - Do you notice anything that may suggest there is a problem with either drive?

C:\Windows\system32>CHKDSK C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is WINDOWS.

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

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
  207104 file records processed.
File verification completed.
  655 large file records processed.
  0 bad file records processed.
  0 EA records processed.
  44 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
  273080 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.
  0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
  207104 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  32989 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  37096560 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

122098687 KB total disk space.
46932368 KB in 132706 files.
80504 KB in 32990 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
314947 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
74770868 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
30524671 total allocation units on disk.
18692717 allocation units available on disk.

-----------------------------------------

C:\Windows\system32>CHKDSK D: /F /R
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Data.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
  256 file records processed.
File verification completed.
  0 large file records processed.
  0 bad file records processed.
  0 EA records processed.
  0 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
  316 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.
  0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
  256 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  30 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
  240 files processed.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
  28338168 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

121689087 KB total disk space.
8266460 KB in 54 files.
28 KB in 32 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
69923 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
113352676 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
30422271 total allocation units on disk.
28338169 allocation units available on disk.

Regards,

Alan

[burakkucat]

To my eye, I see nothing untoward. 

But you really need someone proficient in BGW to review the results and to comment. 

[Berrick]

The results aren't indicating a problem BUT C: drive only ran chkdsk with the /f option not the /r option so not all test/checks were performed on this drive.

By the way you don't need to include the /f option if you are using the /r option. /r does everything the /f option does plus more. You can see that quite nicely in the output you posted. the /f option ran 3 checks whereas chkdsk on drive d: which included the /r option ran 5 checks.

You could download the disk manufactures diagnostics and run extended tests (make sure you backup any data you want to keep) and see what they report. Are you still getting "Windows detected a hard drive problem"? I would still recommend a drive replacement based on the information supplied.

hope this helps

[OldTimer]

I'm pretty confident that when I ran CHKDSK on drive C: I followed the instructions in Sheddian's post.

"In your "DOS" window you can now run CHKDSK as follows :

CHKDSK C: /F /R
it will complain the disk is in use, and ask if you want to run it at startup.  Answer Y to this.

When it eventually reboots and starts up again, you can look in the event viewer and see what the outcome was.

OR you can open a privileged CMD window again, and just type CHKDSK C:and look for a line reporting how many bad clusters the disk has."

It was the latter final CHKDSK 'report' produced after the initial CHKDSK C: /F /R routine that I believe I posted.

Because I ran out of time, and had to get back home, I wasn't able on that visit to run sfc /scannow as you suggested. I may go back today and do that.

I will look at the make of the disk, and investigate your further suggestion about the disk manufacturer's diagnostics, and yes, the apparent warning stating that there could be a Hard Drive Issue, is still popping up from time-to-time.

Regards,

Alan

[OldTimer]

I visited my friend again today and confess that I am still unsure about whether his disk is cracking up or not.

First of all his laptop is a Toshiba Satellite C660/660D
The disk is a Toshiba MK256GSXV

I ran sfc /scannow from the CMD prompt (see attached .txt file) and it reported "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."

I located and ran Toshiba's own PC Diagnostic Tool, and it gave the HD a 'Pass'

I then located and ran Toshiba's HDD/SSD Alert utility (see attached .txt file) which duly reported, amongst anything else, "Your HDD is experiencing a problem and SMART monitoring software predicts that the HDD will fail." I suspect that it is this that is causing Windows to generate the report that still keeps popping up from time-to-time.

Because I suspect that my friend has never done a defrag on his laptop, I downloaded and ran the Piriform Defraggler utility. You will no doubt know that it is the same Piriform that produces CCleaner. Defraggler also showed a 'Disk Health Error' warning.

What confuses me, is that some of the utilities report that the disk is fine, the others say it's beginning to fail.

Do you have any thoughts on the above?

Regards,

Alan

[burakkucat]

What confuses me, is that some of the utilities report that the disk is fine, the others say it's beginning to fail.

I would rationalise that situation by accepting that some utilities are more "thorough and exact" than others.

As a result, I would accept the warnings as true and replace the disk.

[HPsauce]

I would VERY MUCH believe the Toshiba SMART analysis and advise a full backup ASAP of everything that is important and plan for a replacement hard disk.

How old is the laptop and what version of Windows is it? A new laptop may actually be a better option.

[renluop]

If at all relevant my desktop was playing up, but all Alan did revealed nothing amiss. Nevertheless my repair man noticed something telling the disk was failing and should be replaced.

Be risk adverse!!!