Question About Chkdsk

I had thought chkdsk and sfc were one and the same thing, or at least did one and the same thing. I just found out they don't and that chkdsk should be run at least once a month. I did an sfc last night but haven't done a chkdsk in at least a couple of months so just did one now. It got to 100% completion and the computer restarted, so I thought everything was fine. But when the computer had finished restarting, only 4 of the 8 icons that normally appear in the system tray were showing. I could see Battery, Network, Volume and my VPN icon but not AnyDVD, Avast, Dropbox, and I never got a message asking whether I wanted to start Everything. So I went to customise notification area icons and all the ones that weren't showing said beside them "Show icon and notifications", but they weren't showing, so I selected Dropbox and changed it to "Only show notifications", and then back to "Show icon and notifications", and the message appeared saying "This icon will appear when it becomes active." So, thinking that Dropbox hadn't come on for some reason, and not remembering where the main Dropbox app was, I tried opening Everything to look for it. So I searched for Everything from the Classic Start Menu and when Search Everything appeared, I clicked on it. But nothing happened. So, now panicking, I tried restarting the computer. A message appeared saying the Task Host Window was preventing the computer from restarting. Did I want to Restart Anyway? Normally, that kind of message disappears on its own without me having to click Restart Anyway, but this time it didn't. It stayed on the screen for a couple of minutes. So I clicked Restart Anyway, and the spinning symbol with the word Restarting beside it appeared on the screen. But the computer never restarted. The symbol has been spinning constantly for nearly 45 minutes now! I'm panicking! How did I **** up the computer by running a chkdsk?! What do I do?! How do I get the computer to restart?! And normally like it always does with all the normal icons in the system tray?!

 

OK, a bit of good news, I guess. I forced the computer to shut down by holding down the power button and then turned it on again. It started kind of normally this time. For some reason, when it came time to exiting the screen with the clock and entering my Windows password, my USB keyboard didn't work, so I unplugged and plugged it back in again. It worked then, and when I entered my password, the computer restarted with all the normal icons in the system tray. I'm gonna try restarting again to see what happens this time. What could have gone wrong the first time? How did it happen just after running chkdsk? Should I try running chkdsk again? Or an antivirus scan?

 

Well it restarted relatively normally this time. Didn't freeze on the spinning symbol, and recognised my USB keyboard immediately. But my Avast and VPN icons both took much longer than usual to appear. They appeared eventually, just took a while. Is something wrong with my computer?

 

First, chkdsk has switches. Secondly, chkdsk is a simple tool which writes/can edit generic code. System file checker is about system integrity.

Make model of PC please, and have you performed POE on all external hardware?

 

It's an Acer but how do I find out the model, and what's POE?

 

Please indicate the source for this. I rarely run chkdsk on any computer in the house and I've owned computers since January 1997. We currently have 6 computers running Windows (2K, XP and 7) all functioning fine without running chkdsk.

 

https://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/325080-sfc-scannow-chkdsk-whats-diff.html

Bottom line of second post.

 

Power over Ethernet or PoE describes any of several standardized or ad-hoc systems which pass electrical power along with data on Ethernet cabling. This allows a single cable to provide both data connection and electrical power to devices such as wireless access points or IP cameras.

 

Ah, OK. No, I don't use Ethernet at all. I'm all wireless.

 

POE in this case may mean process of elimination. It is a troubleshooting step.

 

Thanks. I am really shocked to see Brink posted that.

Now I'll ask some other experts to see if they agree.

 

Ah, then in that case, no, I haven't. I don't know what it involves.

 

"or as needed."

I prefer to use that option instead of thrashing the disk for no reason when there is no suspicion of any problems to begin with.

 

What do you mean by that? writes/can edit generic code ..?

 

Don't think chkdsk would thrash the hard drive like for example erasing data from empty space or maybe running some kind of extensive write test of the drive (or even defrag). Mostly, chkdsk checks for integrity of the file system. Even when configured to check for bad sectors, it only does a read test, and then only writing if a bad sector is found. The sector is marked and is not used again which is beneficial. Almost all the activity is read only activity.

I don't think it would hurt anything to run it once a month. However, Windows regularly and automatically monitors the speed of retrieval of data , even from backup drives Event Viewer recoords when Windows finds a bad sector(s), and then goes so far as to move the data and mark the sector bad. Which brings me to what I think is the best reason to run chkdsk. That is that the system is functioning poorly and the hard drive or file system cannot be ruled out as a possible cause. If the disk has started going bad, chkdsk might buy a user a couple of more boots to retrieve data or even several months. User might even be able to grab a system image. It's very useful imo and the first thing an everyday user should run when the system is running slow or sluggish. At the very least it's a good step toward ruling out the hard drive as the cause.

BTW, when a hard drive begins to go, there can be OS corruption. If data is missing which was in now bad sectors, all kinds of issues can occur. This is if critical Windows data is in a dead sector primarly but can also single out apps or even destroy files. Aside from this, if the data pickup reader on a standard drive or if on any drive the power or data connectors (drive/source/motherboard/cables etx.) or controller cicuitry aren't functioning properly, that's a different matter. chkdsk won't help with any of those problems obviously...usually only deal with the symptoms of a drive with dying/dead sectors and buy the user some time.

Also, sfc does not check drive sectors like chkdsk can. Otherwise, I think chkdsk checks mostly integrity the master file table and repairs issues while sfc checks the integrity of the Windows OS. I have however read of instances where chkdsk would reference an installation disk in a drive, which leads me to believe that it may fix some Windows issues also. I also believe sfc /scannow will do the same thing from a disk if a required file is not present.

 

For years chkdsk /r has pretty much been a last resort kind of thing in my realm, not a maintenance tool. Here's a list of the switches for the command and how they function. If you don't specify any further action, it's just a cursory check.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491051.aspx

 

There are so many more parameters now ... https://www.lifewire.com/chkdsk-command-2625838.

Chkdsk *is* a maintenance tool, however nowadays the file system driver automatically does much of the work to keep the file system consistent and can even fix errors on the fly.

The last resort thing: If you ever find yourself in the mess that the file system has become unreliable (FUBAR) and files and folder start disappearing, the first thing I recommend is to use a file recovery program. Rather than running chkdsk which is pretty much a one way street. If it screws up, it screws up good. I have seen that happen so many times.

That being said, chkdsk has come a long way (NTFS), and the chkdsk in Windows 10 can not be compared to for example chkdsk Windows XP level. Well you can compare of course, but it has gotten so much better.

If you ever have trouble on FAT based volumes, I'd definitely first try to get data back using a good file recovery tool, due to the nature of FAT. The limitations to repair a FAT based file system lies within FAT, not chkdsk.

 

Well, now that I can feel dated, lol...




Command chkdsk /r needs to be specified to repair corrupted files. Needs a switch for that. You can use up your writes with an SSD faster if you run too much maintenance. But these days MTBF has increased quite a bit with many.

 

Now that depends. Did you use a parameter, or just run the basic command?

Has your boot or restart time improved?

 

Well the same thing that happened last week happened again. Except this time WITHOUT chkdsk. I'd just restarted the computer, and I saw that the system tray icons had again failed to appear, so I restarted. Again, I was told that Task Host Window was preventing restart, so I clicked Restart Anyway. Again, the dotted circle just kept on spinning. I waited about a minute or minute and a half, then I forced shut down again with the power button. What's going on? Why would my system tray icons fail to appear for the second time in a week, and what is this Task Host Window that prevented restart again?

 

What's the difference between /f and /r? I've just been using /f

 

What's a parameter?

 

Best we leave each other alone from now on.

 

I mainly use chkdsk / r for a good reason.One 90% of the time windows cannot run a full systeem check unless you are in administrator mode or rebooted.

 

Jesse it seems to me that you spend ages trying to streamline your PC and the more you do the more trouble you get into. I think Dr. Moriarty makes sense with his statements post (23 & 25). Your comment "best we leave each other alone from now on." was uncalled for, perhaps you should take the doctors advice and do some homework before asking questions. We all come here for advice and in most cases it's because we are truly stumped but if the advice is not what you were after then ignore it and go back t0 the text book.

The old saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it" is very true in this case methinks

 

Tough love.

 

I suggest you run Tweaking.com - Windows Repair Portable.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/tweaking_com_windows_repair_portable.html
Extract the files to a flash drive and restart your PC in safe mode prior to running the program.

 

Thanks. That seems to be a tool for fixing really major problems, though, like if your hard drive seems to be completely crashing. Would you say it's really necessary just for this seemingly minor problem with system tray icons not coming on properly?

Just in case anyone missed this post from earlier,

 

Oh, I see, only those white ones like network and power are my system icons. Right, OK. Well then it's my app icons like Avast and Dropbox that are failing to appear. And then I get this Task Host Window problem preventing restart.

What's with all the italics?

 

Sorry, I don't think you're getting my problem. And I still don't get why you italicized all those words in your second last post.
That's how my system tray normally appears. All those icons normally appear every time I start the computer. Last week, as I said in the first post in this thread, most of those app icons didn't appear. Only the vpn icon appeared that time. Read the first post again to see what I did to try and correct the problem. It happened again this week. Only the Hard Disk Sentinel icon appeared this time, and when I tried restarting, I was again told Task Host Window was preventing restart. Clicking Restart Anyway didn't help. The dotted circle just spun around and around without restarting so I had to force shut down with the power button. I thought the first time this happened last week was because I'd just done a chkdsk but this time I hadn't done a chkdsk. So I just want to know what could be causing this problem and why the Task Host Window would make it impossible for the computer to restart normally.

 

Sorry, I don't see where it says Change settings that are currently unavailable. This is what I see.

 

You are also having a problem with Task Host.
You can go straight to the Repairs and select only the defaults.

Click Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings > Shutdown.

 

I see a HDSentinel icon in your System Tray. How does it rate your HDD?

 

OK, thanks.

Does it matter which "Change plan settings" I click? There are two.

 

Guess you must have never seen this post,

 

What are the 2 options?

 

Look back at that image I posted of the power options window. There are two places where you can click "Change plan settings". Does it matter which one?

 

It would be no good changing settings for the power saving plan as that isn't the currently selected plan.

 

Are you serious!?
You click the one of the power plan you have selected - which is Balanced.

 

Seriously. I don't know anything or understand anything about what anything does or what anything is or what anything means. I need to be told everything. I'm not at home right now but I'll try the Tweaking tool as soon as I get home and let you know how it goes.

 

This problem with the Task Host has happened twice today now. First time, I managed to restart the computer. Second time, I found I couldn't connect to the net, and I had to force shut down. It's on again now normally, so I'm lucky I'm able to download the tweaking tool. I'll download it now and see what it does.

 

With all due respect I reckon with the Tweaking Tool you are going to get into a devil of a lot more strife.

 

The way it's acting now, I wouldn't see an image as being worthy of keeping. Hopefully one was made earlier.