My Vista ultimate 64 decided not to boot up this evening - it had been perfectly OK this morning.

As it started this evening, the load bar appeared and then it went directly into dark screen and CHKDSK appeared. CHKDSK automatically chuntered initially reporting no bad files and then went on in stage 3 to report finding and recovering 54 unindexed files or file fragments. The system then automatically re-booted and re-started without problem.

Needless to say, I wondered what had caused this and how the system had been left following this automatic repair. Would I, for example, find that I had lost large amounts of data or programs ?

I had a look at the disk but could not see any evidence on the disk of the recovered files as you used to get with XP - from memory they just used to get dumped in the prime partition/default disk. Does Vista do a full repair job and automatically re-join and re-index file fragments to make fully repaired and usuable files ?

Had a look on the system event log in order to determine the likely cause

"Errors in the last hour" showed some kernel errors related to a firmware problem power management, a CAPI2 error and an error related to an ATI file (Have ATI graphics card) - the usual suspect would be the ATI card,

I would welcome any ideas what may be occuring ?

Nick

Edited 2 July, 201016 yr by Clunkclick

proberbly just didn't shutdown properly, quiet common to see a chkdsk when this happens, generally nothing to worry about and I wouldnt be to concerned unless it happens repeatedly in which case it could be a pending HDD failure

The recovered files tend to live in a hidden system folder at the root of c:, you'll need to show hidden and system files to see them.

proberbly just didn't shutdown properly, quiet common to see a chkdsk when this happens, generally nothing to worry about and I wouldnt be to concerned unless it happens repeatedly in which case it could be a pending HDD failure

The recovered files tend to live in a hidden system folder at the root of c:, you'll need to show hidden and system files to see them.

As above - if you're bothered , a lot of disc makers have a disc analyser /repairer download on line - I tend to use Powermax from seagate/Maxtor ( as I've got Maxtors) - it'll do a quick (90s) check and advise of problems ,but I'd take advice on using it on other makers discs .Loads as a floppy from boot .

You could try using something like ZTREE to look at the hard drive to see these files - (it's an update from the old Xtree), and uses commands similar to DOS,but reads all files .It's quite easy to use , with commands shown in the lower half of the window .