CHKDSK running for hours - stuck?

Hello,

Let me start by letting you know that lately my system has been freezing up once in awhile while playing WoW. I've had this system for over a year and it has always been fine.

The system is:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHZ
Mushkin 996744 DDR3 PC3-12800 4GB
Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H AM3
Western Digital WD10EALS 1TB SataII 32mb
sapphire radeonHD 5850 1BG DDR5 PCI-E
win7 64bit

Anyways, to the real issue;

After crashing for about the 3rd-5th time in the last 2 months, everything was running really slow. The system froze up temporarily with a "program is not responding error" after trying to do anything at all (opening web-browsers, opening my computer, right clicking the desktop); EVERYTHING took minutes to do)

I did a couple of reboots and tried a system restore and it didn't help any.


So I ran the CHKDSK, and clicked both of the available options provided in the GUI (through right-clicking the HD and going to properties).
During step 5 of 5, it stated that it had found two bad sectors (in separate files) and fixed them.
After 8-10 hours or so (I was asleep) it did complete the CHKDSK running in MS-DOS.

When I woke up, it was running "startup repair" in the windows 7 GUI. (explorer.exe was not running, but I could see my desktop background)

It has been running since I woke up 2.5 hours ago (and possibly up to 2 hours before then, as I last saw the MS-DOS CHKDSK at 96% around 6am, and woke up at 9:30 in the startup repair).

At the top it reads, "startup repair will attempt to fix problems automatically. This may take several minutes. Your computer may restart several times"

Near the bottom it says, "repairing disk errors. This may take over an hour to complete."



I haven't witnessed a reboot yet. (although I haven't been watching it 100%)

Does anyone know if this is normal? Has anyone gone through this and had it actually finish properly? Is there anyway to speed this up?
I believe I read on some forum that excess heat can slow down the chkdsk, and I should try to cool it down. However, the system is a lot more quiet now than it was while running the CHKDSK in MS-DOS. During the CHKDSK, the CPU fan was very loud (as loud as it is running WoW)

Thanks in advance

I've got 2 1 TB. W.D. Caviar Black's in my pc checkdisk take's 3-3 1/2 hours for each one. As far as the Startup Repair a: It will show a Windows when it's finished and you'll have to click on eithe Restart or Yes for it to restart. It also may take more than 1 run of it. B: If you have an external hard drive attached to your pc, make sure it's turned off. As alot of time's the bios will automatically make that the 1st boot device, especially if it's a eSATA drive. Another words that's the drive Startup Repair & CheckDisk are both scanning, thus it'll take wasted hours, as Windows won't repair Windows due to it scanning the wrong drive. You also, may want to try a bootable virus scanner. You could've picked up an infection. Here's a article with links to download them. Don't waste your time with Symantec/Norton unless you have a product key for Norton Antivirus/360/Internet Security. http://www.askvg.com/download-free-b...re-and-others/

I did have an external drive plugged in when I started. I just went and looked, and noticed that it was powered off. (there's no off button) why would it be powered off?

Can my rebooting during the startup repair cause more problems? or is that more of a CHKDSK error?

I'm wondering if the external drive complicated it. Especially since it's very oddly powered off somehow. Perhaps it's best to restart with it unplugged.

Has anyone else experienced the startup repair taking this long with a 1TB drive? I'm starting to feel like it's very unlikely that it's still progressing after 7 hrs without any signs. I tried to hit the cancel button, but it said it can't cancel. Should I just hit the reboot button?

Because, alot of times when you have a external hard drive plugged in & turned on the bios will automatically put that before your internal hard drive in the boot order, which could very weell try to a: search that drive for the Master Boot Record (MBA0, which holds Windows boot files and B: Instaall Windows there, instaed of where you wanted it. It's the same if you have more than one internal hard driver, you're supposed to atleast unplug the ide/sata cable from themThen you replug /turn them on after Windows is installed. I left my 2nd hard drive plugged in the first time I installed Windows 7 and alot of my program installers disappeared during the install of Windows 7, even though it went on my other drive.

wait, so I have to reinstall windows?

my computer kept freezing up and I ran a utility in the control panel, under system and security, find and fix problems, that said there's disk errors.

So I ran CHKDSK, it was at 96%, I fell asleep, and now it's in "startup repair", which must have ran by default after chkdsk was done and the system tried to boot windows.

I'm just wondering if this startup repair is going to eventually going to actually finish, or is it frozen? it's been going for over 10 hours now. Should I just reboot it, or has anyone ever had it take this long?

The startup repair says "fixing disk errors. This may take over an hour" but hasn't changed for 10 hours.

I would have to get passed this before I could reinstall windows anyways

Forgot to answer before. No you don't disrupt Startup Repair until it bring's up awindows asking you to Restart Your PC, click on Restart when it ask's not before it does. That'll definitely cause more issue's. Try this and see what happens. Try either if you have another hard put it in your pc and try installing to that drive. If you don't have another internal drive. Hook your external drive to your other pc. Right click on Computer, then click on Manage, then on the left side click on Disk Management, select your external hard drive by right clicking on it and shrinking it by 30 GBs/30000 MB's. Just make sure that you only subtract 30000 from the size it says your hard drive is. Example in the top box where it says Total Size Before shrink in mbs. on my pc says 953867, the next line says Size of Available shrink space in MBs. mine says 876858, the next line says Enter the size to shrink in mbs. (That's the one you want to enter 30000 MBs. (30 GBS0, which makes the current partition that has your files on it (on mine it would be 0923867. that's the last line where it says Total size after shrink in MBs.So we've got Size before partitioning top line 953867 - 2nd line 876858 Next line 3000 (30 GBs for partition you're creating, making the space on the original partition 950867. You'll now see your external hard drive at the bottom of Disk Management the left side will be the 950867 MBs. which you have files on, the right side will say 30000 MBs. Unallocated, which means you haven't formatted it yet. Right-click where it says unallocated and click on New Simple Volume. When that's done cloce Disk Management. Now open Computer right click the new partition you made and click on Properties, Give it a name EX. Now shut that pc down and plug the external hard drive into your problematic pc. Turn the pc on and hit Delete key on keyboard to getinto the bios, In your bios's menu for Boot Order make your DVD drive first, your external hard drive 2nd and your internal hard drive third. Now install Windows on the EX partition and let us no if it went smoothly. If it did you know your internal hard drive is bad. If it didn't you have other hardware issues, probably something on the motherboard. Definitely not the ram or video card as they would both cause BSOD's. Power Supply would more than likely either BSOD or shutdown. CPU Heatsink/fan overheating would usually make your pc turn off. Any fans inside the pc case, put your hand about 1/4 inch away from on the outside of the case and you should feel strong air. If you don't then you need to get a can of compressed air can at Radio Shack or a pc shop, get a few a small pain brushes or q-tips for the fan blades. Clean the fan bladeds first. then use a pencel, pen .etc and place in each fan, so the blades don't move, while you're spraying the compressed air briskly inside the pc case to blow the dust and gunk out of your pc's case. Do that in a garage or outside. You don't want the dust inside your hose, where it get's back inside the pc fast.