p30 chkdsk problem

Hi,

I have a satellite p30 which i think is suffering from a hard disk problem which I think might be making windows unstable. CHKDSK is running when the machine reboots, it finds problems when it scans the disk but unfortunataly it never progresses past stage 1 of CHKDSK.

I assume stage 2 or 3 would normally fix the problem.

Any ideas how I can resolve this ?

John

 

Have you tried getting a hard drive diagnostic program from the manufacture of your hard drive to make sure the hdd is good before scanning with chkdisk?

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

You could also try HD Tune

 

Thanks unfortunatel I have got a Tosh HD which there is no diagnostic tool for ;-(. When I run HDTUNE and do a full scan the machine crashes straight away. Is there anything else I can do to diagnose a problem with the HD ?

If I reinstall XP will it check the HD before install and mark the bad sectors ?

Thanks.

 

can anyone offer any advice ?

 

You can use the hitatchi diagnostic program. Drive Fitness Test works for all disks.

You can boot to windows just find right?

go to start -> run and type cmd. then in the command promt run: chkdsk /f /v
/v will show you the files it currently is scanning. Atleast then you know which files are causing problems.

 

OKay, I think the best option is to renew the hard drive. Toshiba support have told me it is a 2.5" ATA, my question is is S-ATA the same as ATA and would any of these do as a replacement ?

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/kl.aspx?bn=10614

 

You have a Toshiba P30? It has a Pentium 4 right? It has a ATA hard disk. SATA wont fit.

 

Yes its a pentium 4 and the tech support said it needs a 2.5" ata, are you saying 2.5" sata wont fit then ?

Can you recommend one for me ?

 

ATA = DMA-100 = PATA = Parallel ATA it has different names
SATA = Serial-ATA

You need to first. The discription is not standard because there used to be only PATA before SATA came along. Samsung makes some good PATA drives. Get one that has 5400rpm.

Also before you spend money and buy a new drive... Reformat and reinstall windows. Might fix your problem.

 

Okay Im going to reinstall windows via the product recovery cd.

Do I need to make a cd to boot me into the doc prompt in order to format the hard disk, if so can i download the cd image from somewhere ?

 

The recovery disk should format your disk for you. If it doesnt then you can download a BootCd from here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/hiren.thanki/bootcd.html

It can format and check your hard disk.

 

Wave, thanks for your help. I got the boot disk and used one of the utilities to fix the problem, next time I started windows, chkdsk was able to complete.

John