[rubi]

I have a 2 yr old Fujitsu-Siemens laptop with Win XP Home Ed. installed. Never had any major problems until now. Turned the laptop off a few days ago w/o any probs. No error messages etc. Next morning I couldn't get past the F2/F12 boot screen. Safe Mode didn't work either. Used the Win XP installation CD and tried Repair mode. Good news: was back into Windows and everything was running normally. Bad news: assumed it was all okay again and turned laptop off. Next morning: same story again!! Did Repair mode again and am now NOT turning the computer off. BTW, when I am up and running I did a MS Update which involved restarting. This was no problem. It seems, then, that turning the laptop off somehow screws things up. Can someone please help me a) suggest what might be going wrong, b) how I can check for possible sources of the problem, and c) what I can do about it.
Big thanks in advance
rubi

 

[fatbobthefirst]

When you do a Repair.
What do you do? Do you do a chkdsk?

 

[fatbobthefirst]

[drive:] Specify the drive to check.

filename Specify the file(s) to check for fragmentation (FAT only).

/F Automatically Fix file system errors on the disk.

/X Fix file system errors on the disk, (Win2003 and above)
dismounts the volume first, closing all open file handles.

/R Scan for and attempt Recovery of bad sectors.

/V Display the full path and name of every file on the disk.

/L:size NTFS only: change the log file size to the specified number of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays the current log size and the drive type
(FAT or NTFS).

/C Skip directory corruption checks.

/I Skip corruption checks that compare directory entries to the
file record segment (FRS) in the volume's master file table (MFT)

 

[rubi]

I have not done a chkdisk. The Windows XP installation CD offers two choices: a clean install, i.e. the HD is wiped clean and XP is installed, or to Repair an existing installation. I choose the Repair option in the hope that I hadn't lost all my programs, files, folders etc. Are you suggesting I try chkdisk from within Windows?
rubi

 

[fatbobthefirst]

When you do the Repair.
It comes to a DOS screen.
Do the Chkdsk at that point.

 

[rubi]

I appreciate the suggestion, but Windows is up and running again after a Repair. Now, however, I want to try and find out why this happened in the first place. Are there any other checks that I can do?
rubi

 

[fatbobthefirst]

You can at least do a chkdsk.
Go to My computer and go to Properties of your C drive and Tools.
And check mark both in the Error Checking.
When you reboot it will check the Drive.
or you can also get a tool from the maker of the Harddrive and run the Harddrive check and see if you drive is going bad.

 

[rubi]

Ok, Chkdsk completed. Result: Volume is clean
What next? I mean, since I'm not willing to take a risk and turn the laptop off yet, are there any other possible sources of my problem and what do I need to do to find this out.
Thanks again for the support:up:
rubi

 

[fatbobthefirst]

What about a program from the maker of your HD that checks the Disk?
Or some other Harddrive checking program?

 

[rubi]

thanks again. Could you suggest some HD utilities (preferably freeware) that will do this?
rubi

 

[fatbobthefirst]

Here is a site that has a bunch of them.
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287
And if you know your Harddrive Manufacture choose that one.