CHKDSK gets stuck at 73% for more then an hour Is this normal?

[gamemaster14]

Well I have an Emachines M6805 Laptop with a Athlon 3000+ with 512mb ram, mobile radeon 9600 and a 60gb Hitachi Travelstar hard drive. I have been having a problem where I would get an InPageError when the computer starts up causing it to freeze for like 5 minutes before you can use it. I did some research and found out that this error can commenly be caused by bad clusters on the hard drive. So I went into properties under my hard drive and selected to check for errors and checked both options. The computer says it needed to reboot in order to check for errors. I rebooted and it ran the scan.

The first time through the scan found like 4 errors which it fixed and got stuck at 73% for more then a half an hour. I turned the computer off thinking it may have crashed and it ran the scan again. This time it must have been stuck on 73% for more then a whole hour. Just incase it helps the InPageError was on the Windows Genuine Advantage exe wga.exe and that error was fixed right before 73%

I basically just wanted to know if this was normal when doing a chkdsk on your hard drive. Has anyone seen it get stuck on a certain percent for this long without crashing? Should I just start the computer up and leave it for a few hours and see what happens? The thing I am worried the most about is the lcd of my laptop burning in.

Oh and on a side note does anyone know how to fix a stuck pixel in an lcd? I have one pixel in my laptop lcd stuck green.

[dangel]

Could be a dead drive and it's just 'stuck' in the bad sector of the disk trying to read it over and over again. Depending on how much is dead it could take a very long time to give up and move on. What's the drive sound like? Does it sound like it's still accessing over and over or is it quiet?

Abort the process before it starts and backup what you can (if you haven't already) if you can boot into windows.

[gamemaster14]

The drive never seams to make much noise when it is running. I will listen to it next time I try to run the scan. Is it possible that the drive could be ok but the data is just very badly corrupted?

Edit: Just wondering, is there any ultility that I can run that wouldnt require windows that could check the hard drive for errors. Just need something for when I format the drive to check if the drive is error free before reinstalling everything.

[dangel]

The best util for analysing and repairing drives is Spinrite but it's not that cheap. I've managed to recover laptop drives (but not always data) with it (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) but it's not a tool for the faint hearted, and a new drive is probably cheaper.

If you asked Windows to check for surface errors whilst scanning and it's apparently stopped it's probably beyond the realms of a simple format to sort it out. Laptop drives die all the time - I think it's just heat + being lugged about that gets to them over time. Sorry for not being more helpful - drive death sucks

[gamemaster14]

So this spinrite app runs in dos mode. I might know someone who could have something like this. I will have to ask him. If it changes anything at all. This laptop has crashed and I used the recovery disc on it which formated the drive and restored using a ghost image. Could such errors be caused by that?

Edit: Any idea on how to fix the stuck pixel?

Edit 2: These errors only started after installing the latest Windows Genuine Advantage update. Could this have cause any problems or could it just be a coincidence?

[gamemaster14]

Just a quick update: I had the spinrite running all night and it got stuck on the unrecoverable clusters. Even after using the restore disc I still get messed up sectors so you were correct in saying it was a dead drive. I have ordered a new hard drive which should arrive on monday. I will keep you posted. Since this drive I will be getting is brand new I should have no problems.

[ultimate]

Edit: Any idea on how to fix the stuck pixel?
?

If you mean pixel as in lcd screen and not a sector as in hard drive? then try this link

http://udpix.free.fr/

[IAmATeaf]

Try downloading a low level disk formatter, that should remap or mark the bad sectors and may revive the drive. One word of warning though you'll need to monitor the drive to make sure that the bad sectors aren't creeping ie more are going bad.

I had this with a SCSI disk years ago, ran the inbuilt low level formatter and everytime I ran it it found more and more so ended up RMAing the drive back to Quantum.

[gamemaster14]

Thanks for the link ultimate, I will give it a try. All it is is one pixel stuck green for some unknown reason.

IAmATeaf, Would you happen to known any low level disk formater programs that could do this?

[IAmATeaf]

Found this

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/format_Low.htm

which warns against doing a low level format as the internal of the drive ie sector layout is now controlled via the firmware in the drive so a low level formatter would make a mess of the drive but it does say that pattern writing to the disk is the next best method. For pattern writing I normally use killdisk, you can get that here.

http://www.killdisk.com/

[gamemaster14]

The install onto the new drive went great. It turns out the 60gb drive might still be good. For some reason windows just takes forever to verify the free space on a 4200 rpm laptop drive. I will be putting the 60gb drive in a usb enclosure if it checks out when I get home tonight.

[gamemaster14]

I have tried many formats on the 60gb drive and no good so it might be dead after all. No bother I have my new drive anyway. I thank anyone who helped me in this problem.