Corrupt files throughout HDD. How to find and remove them all?

Hi guys,

I have a problem I've never seen before. My neighbor brought her notebook over and asked me if I could get it running again. It would barely boot, and hung at the drop of a hat. I worked on it for a couple days. I had to find and backup all her data, photos, music...etc. I noticed while doing this, that some of her photo and music files were corrupted. The corrupt files are random throughout the PC. I ran "sfc /scannow" and that fixed the corrupted system files. Now the machine is running nice. The problem I have is that there are still a bunch of corrupt "non-system" files all over the drive that I don't know where they are. Is there a way of finding all these files and deleting them. I'm not concerned with recovering them, I just want to get them off the drive. The problem I'm having is that while running MS Onecare free scanner the scanner hangs when it encounters one of these corrupt files. Seems to be the same with other virus scanners as well. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Mark

BTW, running XP SP3 AMD Turion processor. Compaq V5000 laptop.

 

From a Command Prompt type:
chkdsk c:/r
answer with a y and hit enter, reboot and let it run...
That is assuming that Windows XP is on the c drive.
:confused

 

Thanks. I am in the process of running that on her computer now. It went pretty quick through the first 3 stages. Stage 4 of 5 (verifying file data) is moving very slow (at 5% now). I assume that is where it will find if a file is corrupt. How long am I looking at for a scan completion estimate?

Thanks again,
Mark

Update: at 8 % now, and it has found and replaced bad clusters in some of the files I knew were corrupt. I think this is going to fix my problem. Thanks a lot. I love this forum. (Long time reader, first time poster )

 

It's gonna take a while... I'm at 11% now, but it's finding all the files I was having trouble isolating and replacing bad clusters in them. Thanks again.

 

This is so weird. I just woke up, I'm at 98% on the scan. It has been finding hundreds of corrupt files throughout the drive. How does something like this happen in the first place? One or two files in a folder of hundreds of files corrupted, the rest ok, and this is in hundreds of folders? I can't believe this pc was still able to boot when she brought it to me.

 

Your friend might want to get a new HD for that notebook.

 

Why's that? You think the drive is causing all these corrupt files by not writing them correct because it's going bad?

 

Bad memory can corrupt files, however finding so many bad clusters could be a failing drive too. Memtest86+ for the memory and whatever Compaq offers as a drive tester. If not, Data Lifeguard from Western Digital may help you diagnose the disk though I'm not sure if it will work for a laptop. At any rate, I wouldn't trust the drive anymore.

 

Thanks. What's the best program to make an exact image of the drive onto dvd's so I could use them to restore her drive if it fails? I thought I should do this before I give it back to her.

Thanks again,
Mark

 

You can download Acronis True Image 11 from Newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681620451SF

Make sure you verify the disk/s after running it. Also be sure to create a "bootable CD" in case you replace the HD or the computer will not boot into Windoze.

 

Thanks Puppywunder. I'll give it a try. BTW, do you have to buy a copy of that for each PC that you image, or can you use the same copy for multiple machines?

 

I've put the software on 2 different machines. Use the number you got with the software.

Remember to burn the downloaded software to a CD, so you'll always have a copy.

When verifying the created backup disks, remember to put the last disk in first. It's kinda like a Winzip spanned disk set, where the last disk had to go in first to restore the original files.