Maintenance :: Windows 8.1 Wants To Scan And Repair Drive On Every Boot
Jan 5, 2014
I have this identical problem mentioned here : Scanning and repairing volume (?Volume...) on startup
I think it has something to do with my deleting the 'system reserved' 350mb partition when I reinstalled Windows 8. I don't want it showing in My Computer and when I go into Disk Management and give it a drive letter, this message goes away on boot. But, since I can't merge this very small partition with any other drive, I'm not sure how to not show this drive and not get the scanning message on boot up.
I have some questions regarding the new Chkdsk in Windows 8 (I'm using Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit).
note that Windows 8's Chkdsk has changed considerably since the previous Windows versions; so if you know about the Chkdsk in Windows 7 or previous Windows versions, this could not apply to the Chkdsk in Windows 8.
I also point out that I'm talking about the GUI version, accessible from the drive's properties Window.
My main questions are: when Chkdsk has finished scanning, and the results window appears, can I at once proceed with the following, or should I wait some time:
1) In case of an external USB drive, disconnect the hard drive (with "safely remove hardware", even if the cache is turned off), and turn it off.
2) In case of an internal drive (HDD or SSD), reboot Windows, or turn off the computer.
My worry is that if I would disconnect a USB drive, or reboot or turn off the PC in case of an internal drive, before the Chkdsk-related activity is finished, then the file-system of the disk in question could get damaged.
My doubts come from the following facts:
- I have been told that when the Chkdsk results window appears, this means that Chkdsk has finished working with that drive; but I have noticed that some short drive activity is happening some seconds (about 6) after the results window appears (should be a write activity, not sure if also read activity). I noticed this by observing the LED on my USB drives, and also by monitoring the drives in question with Windows 8's new Taskmanager.
- In case of disconnecting USB drives, I have been told that I can be sure that if some drive activity is happening, then the "safely remove hardware" feature won't have effect, and would warn me that there is disk access going on; but I have tried to select "safely remove hardware" while Chkdsk was in the middle of a scan, and the result was that Chkdsk got interrupted (with an error messsage appearing probably from Chkdsk), and the USB hard drive got removed. Though this seems not to have caused any file-system errors (I did another Chkdsk scan later).
You may think that I just need to look at the drive's LED, or monitor the drive's activity with the new Taskmanager, and take note of after how much time the drive activity ceases. Then I would just need to wait so long before disconnecting the USB drive, or rebooting or turning off the PC.
My problem here is that I'm not sure if the new Taskmanager, or the drive's LED, are sensible enough to detect even the smallest disk access, which could get unnoticed. I'm not sure how much I should wait... seconds? Minutes? What do you think? Perhaps there's no need to wait at all?
I did some tests by disconnecting (with "safely remove hardware") a USB drive shortly after doing a Chkdsk on it. Then I did another Chkdsk after turning it on again. I didn't get any error message from Chkdsk. But I'm still worried that there could be an unfortunate moment, during which a disconnection (still with "safely remove hardware") could cause problems, perhaps because in that moment a write operation could be in process.
I think I have read that the new Chkdsk in Windows 8 uses VSS ("Shadow Copy") to check the drives while keeping them online. With this new Chkdsk, I think it is possible to continue using the drive while the scan is happening, even on the system drive.
I was thinking about this: is it possible that the short activity which I have noticed after Chkdsk's results window appears, comes from this Shadow Copy Service, which is "unmounting" (?) the shadow copy used by Chkdsk?
If this is true, is it important to let the "unmounting" task happen, or can I disconnect, reboot, or turn off before it starts? And what happens if I interrupt this "unmounting" task in the middle, while it is in process?
Does it make some sense to wait some time after doing a Chkdsk, or can I at once proceed to disconnect the USB drive, or reboot or turn off the PC (in case of internal drives)?
Since upgrading to windows 8/8.1 x64 i have twice had this situation when during boot up windows tries automatic repair & fails , every time i restart same repair fail happens , its stuck in this cycle , neither "Refresh" or "Reset" option works , . I have to do a fresh format & install , loose all my files stored in the OS partition , I even tried to recover the files using linux boot cd but the folders were inaccessible/corrupted .
I tried every solution i could find to make it boot including Unable to refresh or reset PC after Automatic Repair fails in Windows 8 but nothing worked .
This has happened twice in the one year since i have been using Win 8 , Is there any way to avoid this from happening i future ?
Acer Aspire V5 is the PC I am using. I turn it on, the boot fails and the pc restarts. Then begins an automatic repair, which crashes and the PC turns off. It is a loop I cannot get out of. I don't have a Windows 8 Disc or anything like that.
I have Windows 8 64 bit Pro Edition working fine using UEFI boot from a SSD disk. I've twice created a system repair disk on DVD but when I use boot override in the BIOS to boot from the DVD, I get the message "Non-system disk....
I was playing WOW the other night on my month old PC and all of a sudden I got a full red screen. I restarted the comp and this auto repair screen popped up and it freezes and just same thing over and over. the bottom of the screen is cut off and the only other window i can get into is the bios setup utility window. Cant get into any kind of safe mode nothing.
I have a Toshiba Laptop Satellite L875D-S7332 Part No. PSKFQU-008003 With Windows 8 x64 Preinstalled. I created a Startup Repair Disk with a DVD. My problem is i cannot boot from this DVD. I changed the Bios to boot from DVD but it still doesn't work!
I have a Windows 8 Toshiba Satellite S855-S5377 laptop. My problem is that I get notified all the time by the Windows Action Center that I should scan my drive for errors even though I already have multiple times. I've already opened the command prompt and typed chkdsk /f /r and did the scan on boot up. I checked the log with the Computer Management Console and didn't find any problems with the hard drive. I also have used other HDD error checking tools and have even used the error checking utility of Windows when you right click the drive choose properties then tools. And every time the PC or the program says my drive is fine but the Action Center warning message doesn't go away.
Today I've tried doing a Chkdsk scan on my primary drive. Through the console, I entered this line to start the process on a re-boot 'chkdsk /f /r c:'.
I afterwards left it to do it's work for the next 1 and half hours '6:40-8:10pm', during this time I went to check on the progress of the scan and what I saw was that it was only '10%' into completion, this confused me greatly as previous computers that I have owned would atleast be around 70, or 80% percent completed, so not knowing what to do, I did a cold-boot.
From what I can tell, no visible damage has afflicted said the drive I did the chkdsk scan process on, but I would still very much like to know why my scan is hanging.
new build win 8.1 I am trying to configure an HP printer driver to digitally scan to a specific folder on a hard drive it says "the device needs to authenticate itself on the network before it can save to a network folder" then asks for my user name and password (not the wireless router name and password) direct Ethernet connection from main computer to router I have tried many variations without success how do I figure out my network computer and user name: in net speak ? e.g. ????????username ?? the Microsoft account adds a whole new level of complexity and woe is my user password my pin number or is it my MS account password or something else is my user name "Robert" as listed in windowsusers folder or is it some variation of in "netspeak" my new build screams but I am undergoing the usual trials of a new clean install (Win 8.1)
My pc is a hp pavilion 64 bit desktop computer model # P6- 2220t it is 5 months old. It originally came with windows 7 then I upgraded to windows 8. I went ahead and used windows 8 to create an image of my hard disc and store it on a usb external hard drive I also made a repair disc.
Everything went well the pc backed up on scheduled and doing well in backing up. My big problem is this I tried to boot from the repair disc but it won't I looked at the bios but it is different from the type of bios that I am familiar.
So system was running perfectly (custom pc, win 8, samsung pro ssd), just did a clean install, fresh drivers, etc. It was running great! ASUS Sabertooth p67 mobo, latest bios.
Then out of the blue, mid game, i get a hard lock up stall. no blue screen but just lock up. shut down and when i reboot, bios didn't find my samsung ssd. unplugged my 2nd sata drive, booted again and now it found the samsung ssd however i got the "no disk found press ctl alt delete"
At this point i ran windows recovery console and did the bootrec fixboot, fixmbr, rebuildbcd, chkdsk party. everything said it was completed successfully.
Now when i boot however i am stuck in an auto repair loop and can never boot into windows 8.
I am thinking the crash is somewhat power supply and/or mobo related. new power supply is on the way and mobo being RMA'ed.
I recently upgraded to 8.1 (mistake) and have been having issues with my harddrive. Just today, I restarted my computer only to get a "windows failed to start" message. I went into the recovery options, and attemped a system restore (didnt work), system refresh (recovery media wasn't present), and CMD commands (chkdsk) and even sfc /scannow which I can't seem to get to run, I always get the "Will start on next boot" message, which it never does. So I attempted using an ISO with the windows 8.1 professional. Tried everything I did above, and still nothing. Refresh fails with the CD, and when i try to install a new partition, it only gives me the option of upgrading (which i cant) or reinstalling everything deleting anything in the process. I don't understand why I can't install on a new partition like I did with Windows 7.
I have had this Samsung laptop for just about a year. It came with windows 8 installed ( I also have a Samsung system recovery disk that I requested) and I have had problems all along. My old laptop had windows vista and I think part of the problem is that my settings somehow were synched with old computer. My old computer had a workgroup, which got synched with new computer. I have tried several times to reset/restore windows 8 to factory settings and at first glance it looks right but a lot of my old settings are still there, especially in internet explorer. Also when I go into advanced repair it says that it cannot be repaired.
I also just found this, but I'm not sure it applies and I don't want to change any settings that I shouldn't be:
Please note that you cannot use Refresh or Reset Your PC features if Windows 8 or 8.1 is installed on a drive with GPT (not MBR) partition table until you force "UEFI only" boot setting in BIOS/EFI. Windows will not detect GPT partition alignment correctly if BIOS booting is enabled.
And this is what shows under my available drives:
available drives local disk (C (System) SAMSUNG_REC2 (C (Missing)
I had a problem where I was running UEFI with secure boot disabled and dual booting with Linux Mint which is UEFI compliant. Mint had installed Grub, Mint's boot manager but I don't like Grub so i installed rEFInd. Unlike Grub rEFInd has support for UEFI and should have worked better as a boot manager. But it gave me problems too. So I had Grub and rEFInd both installed. I could boot to both Mint and Windows but the boot managers, both Grub or rEFInd, would not show at startup like they are supposed to.
I had to boot the PC, then hit Escape getting into my options menu built into the system, hit F9 to get a list of boot options where i could then choose to boot from hard drive, cd rom, usb etc. rEFInd was in this list. Only after choosing rEFInd from here, was I able to open rEFInd and choose Windows or Mint. This is way too many steps to boot into an OS, so i thought i'd try to use the system repair disk to repair my master boot record or the EFI data that the system uses at boot under UEFI. I forgot that i had to run some additional commands under command prompt and just ran automatic repair from Advanced instead.
At this time Windows had no trouble working at all with secure boot enabled if I really needed windows to use secure boot.
It said it found but could not fix the errors. Suddenly, Windows would not boot even with secure boot enabled. I reran the tool 3 times and it didn't work so i wiped the drive and reinstalled Windows from a clean state. I really did not have errors on the system to begin with accept that the system was trying to access my boot managers in an odd manner.. although i could get everything to work.
The automatic repair option should not have made things worse, even breaking my secure boot but it did.
My point of this is to show that the repair disk tools and how they play with the EFI boot tools is buggy and it can break your system even if there is nothing wrong with Windows and it's ability to boot under secure boot. Don't trust the Repair Disk tool folks. Don't trust UEFI. Don't trust Secure Boot. Be smart. Install a clean system under Legacy Bios mode with UEFI and secure boot disabled.
I have a Windows 7 / Windows 8 dual boot setup that was initially working fine. When attempting to update the graphics drivers in Windows 8 last week, something went wrong and the system crashed. Now when I attempt to boot into Windows 8, it goes into the Attempting Automated Repairs loop which never finishes, even when left running for several hours. I attempted to boot off of the Windows 8 installation CD and do a Refresh but it just errors out saying Windows could not be refreshed.
i have recently encounter a problem with my pc.when i was starting my pc it automatically began startup repair & diagnosing your pc screen came.then after some time a message came windows could not repair your pc.details are in D:system32Logfilessrtsrttrail.txt why it is D ? it should be c.
then i restored my computer to one day earlier,then i again ran the automatic repair,it again showed windows could not repair your pc.when i looked into srt.txt i didn't see any error msg.so why it saying that windows could not repair your pc.my specs in my signature & here is my txt report >>
I've been trying several things throughout the day and I have had no success in fixing the corrupted files. I have ran "sfc /scannow" several times (even in safe mode). I have also ran "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth" before and after "sfc /scannow" to no avail.
I am running Windows 8.1, I tried booting from my Windows 8 Pro DVD but whenever I tried to run "sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c: /offwindir=d:windows" I would get an error: Windows Resource Protection could not start the Repair service". How I can fix this without doing a clean install or refresh?
On my friend's Dell Inspiron laptop, Windows 8 will not boot. I want to boot to the repair disk to restore an image I had created. F12 on boot does not show the DVD drive as an option. I went into Setup/Boot and disabled Secure Boot, still did not show the DVD as a boot option. I went back to Setup and selected Boot List Option>Legacy. Now it shows the DVD drive as an option to boot. I booted the repair dis, went through all the dialogs to select the image I had created, but when it goes to restore it it says it cannot because the image was made in UEFI, and it is now set for BIOS.
I went back into Setup/Boot and I see that the option Load Legacy Option ROM is now Enabled, it did it on its own. As a test I set it back to the defaults and re did it as above, and again it automatically changes Load Legacy Option ROM, which I assume is what is creating the problem.
So my question is what do I need to do to boot from the Windows Repair Disk?
My pc froze when I was browsing the web. It gave a blue screen with a sad face emoticon saying it had encountered a problem and needed to restart.
Upon restarting it tried to repair / restore but crashed again and restarted again. I have tried booting to a USB loaded Windows 8.1 pro setup. The Win 8 "setup fish" appears however it doesn't actually enter setup. After a moment the "setup fish" disappears and the screen goes black for a moment then a message is displayed on a blue screen saying File:windowssystem32ootwinload.exe could not be loaded. I wondered if this means it is still trying to boot the OS so i disabled the hard drives in bios just leaving USB but Windows 8 setup still won't boot and I still get the same error message.
My motherboard is an ASUS p7p55d. At the moment I am just using my phone to write this.
I have messed up my computer I need to work on! Basically, I had a freeven pro virus which I have identified by some malware software and I have deleted the registry folders where my several viruses were located. In the process I also I disabled the SYSTEM to control my account (task manager?).
The effect is that the computer at start up shows weird signs instead of English (so I can't even identify troubleshoot- but by now I've tested all options anyways and there is no reaction) but also doesn't want to log in.
The windows key is on the system of the computer (how smart) and I have no access to original cd as im away. Can I automatically repair it somehow from boot or how do i put a windows on usb to repair the computer from it?
Just reinstalled windows 8, loaded everything up and had it perfect. Then I installed a windows update (could it have been 8.1?) and then my computer would not boot. It got stuck on the windows 8 logo with the circle just spinning. After I restart it tries to automatically repair but that doesn't work. I popped the Windows 8 disc in and tried to do a system restore using a restore point but it said "You need to select an OS. Please restart the system and select an OS". ??? I'm not dual booting! Windows 8 is the only OS installed!
Tried safe mode but the windows logo just hangs. Any possibilities to salvage this before doing yet ANOTHER reinstall or refresh or whatever.
A couple days ago, I was casually playing Warframe. Tried to alt+tab out to check an IM and my screen went black. Not sure what happened as I could still hear the mouseover sounds as though Warframe were still active. Fiddled around for a few minutes and couldn't get Task Manager to come up, so I decided to just hold the power button on my laptop until it shut down. No harm done, right?
When I booted back up, Windows greeted me with a "Diagnosing Your PC" message under the normal Toshiba boot logo. After it hung there for a few seconds, it moved on to the "Attempting Repairs" screen. Didn't take long for it to decide it wasn't too happy with me for suddenly shutting it down.
Since then, I've been stuck in an auto repair loop. So far I've googled everything I could think of, but it seems my efforts were in vain. Tried putting Hiren's on a thumbdrive and booting from there, and for some reason, Windows just boots right back into the auto repair screen. I've even wiped my 1TB external and put the recovery image from my work PC on there. That didn't work either. I've gone through every thread google's given me and I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall.
I should probably note that formatting is not an option for me. I'd try installing Ubuntu on my external, but since the recovery won't even boot, I feel like that'd be in vain.
It is a Toshiba satellite L675 and the stickers indicate it is a windows 7 model. However, when I open the machine and turn it on, I am welcomed by the windows eight logo. Past this, I get an endless wait time. It alternates from no message to preparing automatic repairs from boot to boot. I have tried to go into its preperscibed setup mode (f2 at startup) and the boot menu (f12 at startup) neither of these have taken me to a bios or any other interface. I have tried ctrl+f8 and have gotten no success. I have also tried every function key and ctrl plus every function key individually.
I had my system set up for Dual boot (on separate hard drives) for both Win 8.1 and Win 7. Win 8.1 developed a problem and unfortunately the only back up I had (my fault) was for Win 8 before I installed Win 7 and the dual boot.
I reinstalled from the backup and then updated Win 8 to 8.1. Both the Win 8.1 64 bit and the Win 7 64 bit work OK but the dual boot is now missing in Win 8.1.
Is there any way of repairing/creating the dual boot, either in Win 7 or Win 8, without using BCD Edit?
Some Three Months ago, I updated online my WIN 8 Pro OS to WIN 8.1,Since when it has run without any problems, but Unfortunately this morning,when I switched on my PC, I got the following Messages.
1. Preparing Automatic repair 2. Diagnosing Your PC 3. Automatic Repair 4. Your PC did not start correctly - Pressed restart button 5. Repeat of 1, 2, 3 6. Pressed Advance Options button 7. Pressed Continue button 8. Repeat of 1,2, 3 9. Pressed Troubleshoot button 10. Pressed Refresh your PC 11. There is a problem with refreshing your PC 12. Pressed Start Up Repair 13. Start Up repair couldn't repair PC 14. See D:windows system32logfilesmtsattrail.txt 15. Tried System restore but got a message saying No System restores available 16. Selected option for booting from my old WIN 7 Disk
After a short wait my WIN 7 OS booted up successfully and I was able to see the WIN 8.1 OS Disc . I ran my Kaspersky AV on it which came up 'clear', I then ran the OS Disc test which also came up with no errors. Also I Cannot find the log message referred to in 14
Unfortunately I only have my WIN 8 CD, and WIN 8 System Repair disk, which will not work with my current Windows 8.1 installation. I can get into my BIOS by pressing the "del" key on boot, but cannot get into the F8 menu for Safe Mode options.
Computer was running slow so I did a reset of windows. It worked but the problem still existed. My computer froze so I turned my laptop off and back on only to find it stuck in that automatic repair loop. I tried system restore, no luck. I made that bootable usb for repairing and that didn't work either. Straight repair won't work either. I have tried every option and am completely lost as to how to proceed. I need the files off the hard drive but don't have a way to connect it to anything to be able to access the files.
I have a strange behavior when I install virtualbox on my windows8 laptop: Cold boot (windows8 restart) will then fail, whereas shutdown (fast boot enabled) or suspend still work fine.
Laptop is an HP G6 with an SSD installed with 64 bit windows 8. Prior to the virtualbox install all three actions (suspend/shutdown/restart) work fine.
If I install virtualbox (simply installing, not creating any VM), then the next restart will trigger an "automatic repair" screen at boot. Will never terminate. Only way to fix is to escape + F11 and restore a previous restore point. If instead I say shutdown (I have fast boot enabled) or suspend, the system will restart fine at next power on or resume.
