Chkdsk didn't repair bad sectors

mtndebb

Honorable
Jan 21, 2013
2
0
10,510
I've ran chkdsk /r twice (Win7) which takes about 3.5 hours only to have it report 56kb in bad sectors. It apparently can't fix these errors, is there any help for this? No, I don't have a recent backup, my big boo-boo there.
My laptop refuses to boot at all, it doesn't go beyond the first "Lenovo" screen & I don't hear anything beyond it looking for a CD/DVD. I have booted it into the Repair Disk & after running "repair startup" it reports NO problems & also says I have no Restore Points, which were enabled.
Also, I pulled the HDD out & using a USB sata cable attached to another pc found it does work & my files do appear to be all there. Any suggestions???
 
Solution
CHKDSK does not fix Bad Sectors, so its count will not change. What it does is to mark the Bad Sectors in its own file so they will never be used again by Windows. IF the Bad Sector was in use by a file, CHKDSK will replace that Sector with an unused good Sector, thus creating a file containing one Sector of meaningless info. In some cases (e.g., a text document) you can still open and read that file, and you can attempt to re-create the missing data that appears as jumbled junk, then save the fixed file. In other cases (e.g., an .exe file) your best solution is to replace that file by copying from another source with a known-good version. The big problem, though, is that CHKDSK does not tell you which files have been affected in this...

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
CHKDSK does not fix Bad Sectors, so its count will not change. What it does is to mark the Bad Sectors in its own file so they will never be used again by Windows. IF the Bad Sector was in use by a file, CHKDSK will replace that Sector with an unused good Sector, thus creating a file containing one Sector of meaningless info. In some cases (e.g., a text document) you can still open and read that file, and you can attempt to re-create the missing data that appears as jumbled junk, then save the fixed file. In other cases (e.g., an .exe file) your best solution is to replace that file by copying from another source with a known-good version. The big problem, though, is that CHKDSK does not tell you which files have been affected in this way - it does not even tell you if the Bad Sector it found was NOT in use anyway, or whether it WAS part of a file that has now been altered.

Now, you say that your HDD works just fine when accessed from another computer. Furthermore, you have seen no reports that it contains bad files or troubles in the Partition Table. If there is really nothing wrong with the data on your HDD, the problem may be elsewhere.

Check your BIOS Setup screens for the way that your Boot Priority Sequence is set. Many would set it to try the DVD drive first, then go on to the HDD that contains your OS (I presume you have only one HDD in the laptop, anyway). There should not be any other device listed as a possible boot device, for most situations. If you have to change anything in there, make sure to SAVE and EXIT.

If your system is set that way, it should check the DVD drive first and then proceed quickly to the HDD. If it fails to find Windows there to boot up, it should give you an error message that asks for you to insert a bootable disk or something. But if it just freezes with no sounds of the HDD head seeking a track, that would indicate that it succeeded in reading some files from the HDD, but ran into an error when the file was actually executed, leaving it in a loop. That would indicate a corrupted file in the OS.

If corrupted file looks probable, you can try a Repair Install, not a Repair Startup, from the Windows Install CD. This process attempts to test all of the OS's files on the HDD and replace any found faulty with new copies from the CD.
 
Solution