Windows 10 won't boot "Repairing disk errors this might take more than an hour to complete"

[Zombie_hunter99]

Hi everyone, last weekend I was going to use my computer when I realized that it was frozen so I pressed a the power button to shut it off. Then several minutes after I turned the computer on it still did not start up the windows logo was still there and the singing gears were still there, so I turned it off again (the same way as before).

Then after about a couple of times of doing this it said "Preparing automatic repair" or something like that below the windows logo and spinning gear. Then it said "Scanning and repairing C: drive" and after that it said "Repairing disk errors. This might take more than an hour to complete." below the windows logo and spinning gear. I let it repair my c drive for about two hours and then I turned of my computer because I thought that something was wrong.

Now when ever I try to startup my computer it says "Preparing automatic repair" or something like that after that it said "Diagnosing your PC" and then "Scanning and repairing C: drive" and then "Repairing disk errors. this might take more than an hour to complete." all below the windows logo and spinning gear.

I then made a bootable windows 10 USB drive so I could access the recovery options because F8 was not working. After that was done making I booted from it and then from the command prompt in the advanced recovery options/ Windows Recovery Enviroment I ran Chkdsk and Sfc /scannow but both did not find any errors. I tried letting it repair disk errors for over an hour again. I also tried disabling and enabling secure boot.

By the way the week before this happened my computer was running alright except it froze a couple of times and maybe even crashed once. I did not think anything of this because I though it was just a buggy driver or bad a windows update or a bad antivirus update and I did not have enough time to deal with it.

I also got notifications that I needed to repair the errors on my hard drive. I did install software that I installed before on another computer and an earlier version of another piece of software that I had stored on on a USB flash drive so I recover some accidently deleted game saves. Is my hard drive failing? What should I do now? Should I try running system restore? What happened to all of my files? Should I go back to a previous build Was this caused by a virus or malware. Thank you guys I hope you can help me.

Processor: Intel Core i5 4690K 3.5 Ghz.
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB (1 year 8 months old)
Mother Board: As Rock Fatal1ty H97 Perforamnce
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64 Bit (Upgraded from Windows 8.1 64 Bit)
Graphics Card: MSI Radeon 280 3G
Ram: G.Skill 8 GB 1600 Mhz


[Unformatted wall of text converted to spaced paragraphs for easier reading - - Moderator]

 

[Colif]

chkdsk repairing errors on a 1tb drive can take up to 4 hours or more, depending on how many errors it has. I would leave it running overnight and let it finish.

you can run Data Life Guard for windows on HDD and see what the short and extended tests find - its made by Western Digital, the people who made your HDD: https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?lang=en

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Zombie_hunter99,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your WD Bue drive.

Unfortunately, there's a chance that the drive is failing.

As Colif suggested, it may be a good idea to wait for the process to finish. Once the drive is accessible, you need to get your data off the drive ASAP. Then, you can test it with the DLG tool already provided.
If your system won't boot, you can use some data recovery tool for DOS mode, in order to access your data. You can check the Ubuntu Live CD approach out: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode
You will need a CD or a flash drive, so you can boot from it and access the drive.

The drive should be under warranty right?

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[damnsalvation]

Odds are your drive is fine. I just got through dealing with what sounds like the same issue, and the cause was an update gone wrong. Your computer probably froze partway through (which you saw) and when you rebooted it caused some file system errors (not that you had a choice). The running check will correct those, probably faster than estimated, but it still won't boot.
You'll need to roll back the failed upgrade.

Your computer will reboot, try to boot windows, fail, and bring you to the recovery options screen. You want Troubleshooting -> Advanced Options -> "See more recovery options" (at the bottom) -> "Go back to the previous build"

Then you're done. Just wait for it to finish and it should reboot you back into windows.

 

[Zombie_hunter99]

I made an Ubuntu USB Flash drive and booted from that in the trial mode so I could try access my files. When I did this Ubuntu recognized my drive but for some reason I could not mount the drive because I got an error message saying that I needed to shut down Windows fully before I tried mounting the drive because of the hibernation file on my hard drive. I tried running a command from terminal to force it to mount but that that did not work. I did use the Disks program to check the status of the disk. I was able to see my hard Drive but it said was not mounted and it had 29 disk errors and that it was pre-fail. Then when I turned off my computer I tried again the next day I was able to mount the drive and view the file inside and every thing looked like is still there. When I sued the Disks program to check the status of the hard river and it still said it had 29 errors on it.

The next thing that I did was take a dying WD hard drive and install Windows 10 on that drive temporary and use it transfer files from my unbootable hard drive to my external hard drive. he reason why I am going to do is because I do not have a Sata to USB adapter or empty external Hard Drive enclosure to connect the unbootable Hard drive to my Laptop and I also do not have access to another computer.

When I try to run WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic by clicking its icon from the start menu is says "DLGDIAG for Windows has stopped working"
I have tried running as administrator and in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows XP SP3 compatability modes but it still dies not work. I then downloaded a similar program called CrystalDIskInfo and I also accessed another piece of software on the Downloads folder on the unbootable drive called F-Stream Tuning which was part of my computers motherboard DVD. Both of these programs are programs that I have used before. Both of these programs have the ability to see the SMART of all the drives on my computer(I will attach screenshots of their SMART).

Also I forgot to tell you that I when I was going to run CHKDSK disk in verification mode it said that it estimated that it would take 6-7 hours to . The reason why I want to clone my drive so that when I run CHKDSK again I can revert the drive to how it was before I ran CHKDSK in case I mess something up or it corrupts some files. When I was copying file I noticed that my external Hard Drive got knocked over or turned at an angle. It may have on and transferring files when it happened. Is the Drive OK? Do you think my files are OK? I also noticed more of a grinding/clicking sound. I cannot tell if it is coming from my external Hard Drive or one of My internal. What do you think?



I was also wondering if there was a way to check if the folders that I copied and pasted into my new drive were exactly the same as the one on the old drive because when I right clicked the copied and pasted folder my external Hard Drive and the same folder on the unbootable Hard Drive the size and size on disk of the two folders was different but the amount of files and folders was the same. What does this mean? I was also wondering if there was a way to see where the corrupted files are or where the errors on the disk are.


The guy on the Micrsoft fourms said that I should run chkdsk /R, Is safe to run? Will it isolate the bad sectors? Will it help or harm my computer? Will it corrupt the files on my computer?

 

[Colif]

chkdsk /r repairs bad sectors so it can only do good for your PC if it helps it boot up

you cannot revert chkdsk, it is fixing the physical hdd, not anything inside windows itself.

can you plug external drive into another PC to isolate where the clicking coming from?

 

[Zombie_hunter99]

Could I clone my unbootable Hard Drive? Captain W_D on Microsoft forums says "hey are marked as bad and if the data from them can be read it gets reallocated to another healthy sector and this one is marked as bad and not used anymore. If the data cannot be taken from the sector it is again marked as bad and never used again. chkdsk /r simply checks the whole surface of the platter inside the drive if there are any problematic sectors, reallocates data that can be read from some of them and isolates the rest of them."

 

[D_Know_WD]

Yeah, there's a chance that you will be able to clone an unbootable hard drive, as long as it is properly recognized by the tool. Yet, it may not be the best thing to clone a failing drive.

D_Know_WD

 

[Randi_82]

Odds are your drive is fine. I just got through dealing with what sounds like the same issue, and the cause was an update gone wrong. Your computer probably froze partway through (which you saw) and when you rebooted it caused some file system errors (not that you had a choice). The running check will correct those, probably faster than estimated, but it still won't boot.
You'll need to roll back the failed upgrade.

Your computer will reboot, try to boot windows, fail, and bring you to the recovery options screen. You want Troubleshooting -> Advanced Options -> "See more recovery options" (at the bottom) -> "Go back to the previous build"

Then you're done. Just wait for it to finish and it should reboot you back into windows.

My Toshiba laptop is stuck in "Repairing disk this make take over an hour." I have read so many things to try to fix it and the all tell me to go to Advanced Options or something like that but how do I get there I can't ever get my computer to start up in safe mode or do anything other than going to the scree that says Repairing disk, I have tried F8, F4, F5, F10 and nothing works. Can you help?

 

[Randi_82]

Odds are your drive is fine. I just got through dealing with what sounds like the same issue, and the cause was an update gone wrong. Your computer probably froze partway through (which you saw) and when you rebooted it caused some file system errors (not that you had a choice). The running check will correct those, probably faster than estimated, but it still won't boot.
You'll need to roll back the failed upgrade.

Your computer will reboot, try to boot windows, fail, and bring you to the recovery options screen. You want Troubleshooting -> Advanced Options -> "See more recovery options" (at the bottom) -> "Go back to the previous build"

Then you're done. Just wait for it to finish and it should reboot you back into windows.

Hoe do I get to my recovery options screen? I have tried rebooting and hitting F4, F5 F8 and F10 and nothing works my computer just says Diagnosing PC and then the screen goes black and then it pops up says "Repairing Disk this make take over and hour to complete." This laptop is not that old and hasn't been used that much. I think it was just an updating issue but now I don't know what to do. Can you help?

 

[Colif]

if the hdd is over 2tb in size it can take a few hours for chkdsk to fix problems. I would suggest making a new question about the problem as it will get more attention

 

[MaxMallon]

I don't have 'solution', but I do have a tip -for others who stumble on this thread, as you're most likely done by now-
If you can boot onto Ubuntu from USB, you can mount the drive in read-only mode, that way I was still able to copy the whole drive (file-copy, not cloning it).
I'm fairly certain I'll have to just buy a new storage media. For me too it's been stuck in 'repairing disk' for hours, sometimes crashing and showing a bluescreen. I also could not boot into Ubuntu which was on a different partition. -though again, Ubuntu from USB worked fine-
I ran a scan for bad sectors on the disk, and at some point it just started spewing out incrementing numbers, like I'd made a small program to print i++. After a few hundred thousand I decided to stop it.
I'd also had problems with disk usage being nonstop at 100% in the months leading up to this, despite the actual rates varying wildly/normally (10kbps would be 100%, and then a minute later 15mb/s would also be 100%)