Solved Damaged Blocks Detected in HD Tune, Failure to Boot

nomad6770 · Oct 7, 2012

A week or so ago my PC failed to boot Windows 7 (64 bit) from my 1TB Western Digital WD10EARS. The screen would go black after the boot logo (no cursor, monitor was still displaying). after waiting several minutes, I hard shutdown my PC by holding down the power button.

After several attempts to boot with the same results, I attempted to safe boot which would hang while loading CLASSPNP.sys. in short, I could successfully boot after running a full DSKCHK with stages 4 & 5 (which "replaced bad clusters in file 69361 of name /windows/system32/config/software" during stage 4) and running startup repair from my recovery disc.

I thought I had resolved the issue until I booted up the next day, during which the same problem had returned. After going through the same recovery process again (DSKCHK + startup repair) I could once again successfully boot. though this time I refrained from using it to avoid causing any more damage, and installed Windows XP SP3 on my 80GB drive.

I have since then realized that my "fix" grants me one boot before going back to it's unbootable state. I ran a full error scan in HD Tune, which detected 4 damaged blocks (0.2%) as shown in the attached picture.

Temperature is perfectly fine and the S.M.A.R.T. info as read by HD Tune detected no issues.

My question is, Should I:

A. Use a program such as HDD Regenerator, DLGDIAG or Spinrite to fix this issue and continue using the drive

B. Use a program such as HDD Regenerator, DLGDIAG or Spinrite to fix this issue then format and reinstall Windows

C. Simply format and reinstall Windows

D. Replace the drive

E. Sacrifice a (stick of) RAM on the blood moon

F. Repair install

G. Other

I've already backed up what I needed to, but purchasing a new drive isn't really a good option for me as I really don't have the money for it right now.

bigmck · Oct 7, 2012

Try a System Restore to a date before you had a problem the first time.

nomad6770 · Oct 8, 2012

bigmck said:
Try a System Restore to a date before you had a problem the first time.

I can go ahead and give it a try (who knows, maybe the problem lies in the registry). If I run System Restore from a Windows 7 recovery disc, will it create a Restore point prior to rolling back?

Just in case things don't go right, because I don't know when the last Restore point was made.

Golden · Oct 8, 2012

Hi,

Those bad sectors cannot be fixed, but what you can, and should, do is prevent data being written to them. To do that you need to run chkdsk /R. To do that, follow this:

1. Click Start

2. In the search box, type cmd
3. In the list that appears, right-click on cmd.exe and choose Run as administrator
4. In the command window that opens, type chkdsk /R and hit enter.

You will be prompted whether you wish to schedule a check disk at next boot up. Press 'Y' and reboot your system. Now be patient whilst the chkdsk completes. Your system should run a little bit better.

Longer term, keep an eye for more bad sectors - if more appear, consider replacing the drive.

Regards,
Golden

nomad6770 · Oct 8, 2012

Golden said:
Hi,

Those bad sectors cannot be fixed, but what you can, and should, do is prevent data being written to them. To do that you need to run chkdsk /R. To do that, follow this:

1. Click Start

2. In the search box, type cmd
3. In the list that appears, right-click on cmd.exe and choose Run as administrator
4. In the command window that opens, type chkdsk /R and hit enter.

You will be prompted whether you wish to schedule a check disk at next boot up. Press 'Y' and reboot your system. Now be patient whilst the chkdsk completes. Your system should run a little bit better.

Longer term, keep an eye for more bad sectors - if more appear, consider replacing the drive.

Regards,
Golden

As I said in my first post,

I could successfully boot after running a full DSKCHK with stages 4 & 5 (which "replaced bad clusters in file 69361 of name /windows/system32/config/software" during stage 4) and running startup repair from my recovery disc.

I thought I had resolved the issue until I booted up the next day, during which the same problem had returned. After going through the same recovery process again (DSKCHK + startup repair) I could once again successfully boot....I have since then realized that my "fix" grants me one boot before going back to it's unbootable state.

Also, HDD regenerator claims "HDD Regenerator is a unique program for regeneration of physically damaged hard disk drives. It does not hide bad sectors, it really restores them!"

Golden · Oct 8, 2012

Except it appeared not to have worked, since the same problem has returned............or have I missed something?

Did you specify the /R switch when you ran chkdsk?

Some light reading for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_sector

A bad sector is a sector on a computer's disk drive or flash memory that cannot be used due to permanent damage (or an OS inability to successfully access it), such as physical damage to the disk surface (or sometimes sectors being stuck in a magnetic or digital state that cannot be reversed) or failed flash memory transistors.

nomad6770 · Oct 8, 2012

Are you saying DSKCHK didn't work, or HDD Regenerator? If DSKCHK, then yes it didn't work. if HDD Regenerator, then I have not used it yet.

Also, do you think this will work?

Golden · Oct 8, 2012

Did you specify /R switch with chkdsk?

Your issue doesn't sound like a bootloader issue to me, so I wouldn't go down that path yet.

nomad6770 · Oct 8, 2012

Golden said:
Did you specify /R switch with chkdsk?

I scheduled it through Explorer rather than CMD. but it is my understanding that checking both options as shown HERE is the same as using the /r switch in CMD.

Golden · Oct 8, 2012

Yes, that my understanding.

Since your errors occur in the \windows\system32 folder you should check for system file corruptions:

1. Click Start

2. In the search box, type cmd
3. In the list that appears, right-click on cmd.exe and choose Run as administrator
4. In the command window that opens, type sfc /scannow and hit enter.

Report the output once it finishes.

nomad6770 · Oct 8, 2012

Since I'm running XP off of a separate HDD to use my PC right now, what command should I use so CMD scans the correct HDD (I

? And I assume that there no such "Run as Admin" required while using XP.

Golden · Oct 8, 2012

Mm, I've never run sfc across OS version before, not even sure it can be done, but you can run it from a Windows 7 installation DVD:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/139810-sfc-scannow-run-command-prompt-boot.html

nomad6770 · Oct 8, 2012

Fixed!

It's fixed! though I'm not 100% sure what fixed it as I tried multiple things before checking. I'll try and go over everything to help those with the same or similar issue.

I booted into my Win7 repair disc and entered the following codes in Command Prompt;

Code:

bootrec /fixmbr

bootrec /fixboot

bootsect /nt60 all

then rebooted back into the repair disc and entered the following into Command Prompt;

Code:

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows

Finally, I rebooted one more time and allowed it to attempt to repair the start up problems it was detecting.

The only remaining issues are;

The boot logo/screen has changed from the sexy glowing orbs to the infamous Vista start screen. I'm not sure whether I want to attempt to fix this or not simply because I'm a bit paranoid to mess with anything boot related right now.
The boot screen disappears quite quickly in comparison to usual, leaving me with a few scary seconds of staring at a black screen before the Welcome Screen appears.

Also, for whatever reason when running the SFC scan it said that some things could not be fixed and to check the CBS log.

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