tale of corruption & scandisk lockup

When starting up the other day, I got a message that informed me of a consistency problem with my C: drive (WinXP Pro installed here) and I need to scan the disk.

Fine, fine, so I let it go and it does for about 5 seconds until the drive gets to about 16%-17% scanned, then the computer locks up.

Restart, try again. Same result. Try again ... and again ... blah blah blah.

Got bored with that and 'hit a key' and skipped the scan. The system seems to be stable and works fine. UNTIL I find that a folder has become corrupted. I know this becase windows helpfully tells me this when I try to open it.

I have tried a couple other disk checking programs (disk checker, for example), and they work fine UNTIL they start scanning the corrupted folder. Then the system goes wonky and eventually crashes. As long as I avoid that folder, everything seems to work fine. I only know of one corrupted folder, but I am not ruling out that there may be others.

Would greatly appreciate help on
a) determing what the heck happened and how I can make sure it doesn't happen again.
b) recovering files in corrupted folder.

Thanks

 

First, suggest you try running the disk scans in Safe Mode.

Do you have up-to-date antivirus? If not, run online scans (see the security forum for websites).

Not being able to access a folder is strange. Which folder is it?

Matt

 

First, its chekcdisk that's hanging at 18% (not scandisk like I said before, I don't know if that matters)

I am running AVG antivirus, and yes it is up to date. I did a virus scan on my system and it came up clean. I am assuming that it scanned the affected folder

The folder is a subfolder of Shared Pictures named '2004'. Lately I have had trouble even getting Shared Pictures to open from Windows Explorer.

HOWEVER! When I go to insert picture from Microsoft Word I can access Shared Pictures with no problem, but when I try to open '2004' WinXP pro tells me that the folder is not accessible because its not in accessible location, password protected, or has a '/ or \' in the name. Windows will let me change the name of the folder under the properties contextual menu. Under properties it says that the size is 0 bytes, 0 folders, etc.

Thanks for the help so far.

 

Thanks for the extra info.

I will say that it seems like a file system problem rather than a hardware problem. I work in 98SE so I hope that one of the WinXP people can see something.

The moderators may wish to consider transferring this thread to the WinXP forum.

I saw something today which may be a lead. At work, using WinXP pro, I was trying to move some files/folders off my C: drive that belonged to a lady that shares my computer under a different "user ". When I looked at the folder it was listed as 0 bytes, 0 folders, although when she logged in, the files were all there.
You may need to be logged in as Administrator to work on that folder, although I could not explain why a "shared" folder should act as a "user" folder. The problem may be in the security designations that WinXP implements.

Matt