Administrator getting Access Denied along with CHkdsk errors at startu

G'day,

I'm trying to help a friend troubleshoot a problem that she is having on her Win7 64-bit machine. She is the only user of the machine and her user icon shows her as administrator.

I have not seen the problem but according to phone conversations when she turns the PC on she gets a black screen with a message that the file system is being checked, but the checking stops with an "unknown error", the black screen flashes and then she gets to her normal log-in screen. This has been going on for a few weeks (ARRRGGHH). The only reason she called me was that she lost internet connectivity this morning. I told her we needed to ignore the connectivity issue until we get the disk issue resolved.

I had her login, open a command prompt, and type in CHKDSK /f but the system returns an ACCESS denied and says she need elevated credentials to run this. As I said she is the only user and she is listed as an administrator under account controls. I had her create a new user account with administrator privileges but NO JOY she still cannot run CHKDSK /f.

This is sounding a bit like a virus but I was wondering if anyone had some thoughts on why, or how, administrator privileges are being overridden?

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Ski

hey,

to get permission to do CHKDSK/f. you could try enabling the 'super admin account'

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search field, type CMD.
3. On the list of available programs, right click the Command Prompt icon and click Run as Administrator.
4. In the black window, type: net user administrator /active:yes
5. Press Enter.
6. The system should return you with the following message: The command completed successfully.
7. Now, exit the Command Prompt and click the Start icon.
8. Log off from the current account and in the Account window you should now see the Administrator account.
9. Done!
10. If you want to turn off the Admin account, type: net users administrator /active:no

( copied from How to Turn On Super Administrator Account in Windows 7 | Web Talk )

Thanks - that sounds like it's worth a shot.

Ski

My friend was able to get the super admin account to work which allowed her to run CHKDSK /F but it errored out with that same "unknown error". I talked her through trying a System Recovery but that also crapped out saying that none of the recovery files was valid.

At this point I've asked her to leave her computer with me for a few days to see if I can get it working. I plan to run a virus scan from a CD and then try see if I can run a backup before trying to repair the OS from the OEM disk. If that doesn't work I suspect I'll have to reformat her drive and restore her data as best I can.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Ski