where can i find a program that can fix disk errors from windows xp

[andreasaspenberg]

i am working on a pc that i will set up for a place and there is harddrive issues that prevents chkdsk from finishing, causing it to start every time the pc starts. its harddrive is very slow so i need to defrag it but i cant do that until i fix the disk errors.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Depends on the type of disk error. Physical disk errors cannot be fixed and only some can be mitigated.

Sector errors can be mitigated by marking the sector as dead when discovered. Mechanical faults mean the disk is broken and needs to be thrown away. Data corruption errors means the disk needs its partition logic checked and that the disk is fine.

If your hard disk is very slow (check disk takes forever or never finishes) then you are likely suffering from mechanical faults and the hard disk will fail completely in the near future (it is already failing which is why it is so slow).

If you are concerned about the check disk program being corrupt on your computer, you can always plug the disk into another computer that works and get that to check the disk using its check disk.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

i dont know what kind of error it is but i cant repair it from dos.(at least with chkdsk.) i therefore need a tool that can scan from windows and the tool that comes with xp cant do that on the system drive. the pc was originally used as a client. scandisk could most likely have fixed the issue but microsoft removed that in favor of the inferior chkdsk which they earlier replaced with scandisk. i therefore need a tool that can fix errors from windows. alternately a tool that can boot from dos and scan a ntfs harddrive from a diskette.

 

[Dr Super Good]

MS DOS has not been used since before Windows NT, after which it was offered as an application layer for backwards compatibility until Windows 6 Vista where it was dropped completely so I have no idea what you are talking about.

If the standard Windows check disk software that runs as part of the boot strap loader does not work then either it is corrupt or your drive is. If it fails after some time then your system might be overheating or suffer from poor reliability.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

chkdsk is flawed, specially the windows xp version. it actually destroyed one of my harddrives once. the pc doesnt crash but chkdsk cant scan every file for some reason and that blocks defrag because chkdsk runs whenever the system starts up and as long as it is scheduled to run by the system i cant defrag that harddrive.

 

[Dr Super Good]

it actually destroyed one of my harddrives once

That is physically impossible as hard disks are not designed with self-destruct mechanisms inside them. If it really did destroy the drive then the drive probably was close to failing and the strain of running a disk check (yes they are very strenuous for the drive as they do a lot of I/O) probably pushed it to fail so it would have failed anyway, just a little while later.

the pc doesnt crash but chkdsk cant scan every file for some reason and that blocks defrag because chkdsk runs whenever the system starts up and as long as it is scheduled to run by the system i cant defrag that harddrive.

What errors is it reporting? If you ordered a full check you may find it still is working, just very slowly (people report it taking >14 hours).

 

[andreasaspenberg]

it say that it cant read the files or something and then skips to the next until it have scanned them all and then windows starts. it is using 64 bits windows xp by the way.