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Odd Windows Behavior After Hard Disk Diagnostic Test
For some reason I decided to run a full Extended Scan of my Western Digital hard disks (4 years old) using WD Lifeguard Diagnostic Tool for Windows. The tests ran and the drives passed. (Feb 28)
On the next startup (unfortunately this was partially unattended, I just caught the tail end of it) it looked like chkdsk was running. Some notes I jotted down (not well):
- "Deleting corrupt attribute record (128, " " )
- "One of you disks needs to be checked for consistency"
- "60 reparse records processed"
- "deleting index entry sessionstore.js in index $ "
After that, over the next week, some strange behavior occurred:
- I went to scan some documents and received an error regarding a "bad image" of specific Epson DLLs, and suggestion to reinstall the drivers. The kicker: the scanner worked. I reinstalled the drivers anyway - end of that problem.
- My laser printer disappeared from Devices and Printer. The kicker: I could still print to it from any program. Then it just reappeared, still the default printer.
- Certain programs (Firefox, Thunderbird) do not start, or take quite a while to start (spinning orb). A restart of Windows clears that up when it happens. Watching task manager processes while waiting for the programs to start I noticed 3 instances of Windows Media Player come up and go off, then the program opened.
- Shut Down was delayed on random occasions - in some cases requiring a Hard-Off
- All these symptoms are new and occurred after the test
I did due diligence:
- Ran virus scans and anti-malware. All clean.
- Ran System File Checker. All clean.
Then I ran a chkdsk C: /r .
Checkdisk found "2 unindexed files recovered" and fixed them.
Things seemed to have calmed down a bit after that. But not quite up to normal performance.
So what do y'all think? Have you seen anything like this before? Could a diagnostic test bork a Windows installation?
What other tests can I run to check the integrity of my installation?