HCHTech
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 4,213
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA - USA
I have a Sony Win8.1 laptop on my bench. The complaint was that it is stuck in an automatic repair loop. "How long has it been like this?", I ask. "About 2 weeks" comes the reply. "I've been turning it on every once in a while to see if it might have fixed itself." 
So, I take an image, then boot up the computer. Sure enough, it goes into an auto-repair routine, which fails. I mount the disk in my linux bench machine to take a look. It mounts fine, and passes a gSmartControl short test. No errors in the smart logs, about 1,200 hours on the meter.
So I start browsing around the disk in linux, and the entire users directory is empty. Hmm. So is Program Files(x86), Program Files, Program Data, and the Windows directory. Then I see it - on the root, a single found.000 directory. Ahh, chkdsk, my old nemesis. In that directory are about 10,000 dirxxxx.chk folders, and about 15,000 filexxxxx.chk files. The directories I checked contain normal looking files, the first several are music folders with mp3s.
Wow, what a mess. I've never seen chkdsk cut such a wide swath. The customer left an external drive they had been using for backups, but the newest file on that drive is from mid-2013. This is going to be a fun phone call to start the week with.
So, I take an image, then boot up the computer. Sure enough, it goes into an auto-repair routine, which fails. I mount the disk in my linux bench machine to take a look. It mounts fine, and passes a gSmartControl short test. No errors in the smart logs, about 1,200 hours on the meter.
So I start browsing around the disk in linux, and the entire users directory is empty. Hmm. So is Program Files(x86), Program Files, Program Data, and the Windows directory. Then I see it - on the root, a single found.000 directory. Ahh, chkdsk, my old nemesis. In that directory are about 10,000 dirxxxx.chk folders, and about 15,000 filexxxxx.chk files. The directories I checked contain normal looking files, the first several are music folders with mp3s.
Wow, what a mess. I've never seen chkdsk cut such a wide swath. The customer left an external drive they had been using for backups, but the newest file on that drive is from mid-2013. This is going to be a fun phone call to start the week with.
