HELP! Can't fix disk errors -- WinXP has system "locked"

[WAZ]

I have been having strange problems occasionally while booting my system. As Windows XP is loading, it suddenly flashes a bright blue screen full of white text, then restarts. I don't have time to read anything it says, as it's only up for a split second before rebooting. And this doesn't happen all the time -- just once in a while.

Anyway, my Norton SystemWorks detects disk errors with the file structure, but says it needs the "Automatically Fix Errors" box to be checked in order to fix the problem. But when I check that box, it says that my operating system has exclusive access to the drive/files and that I need to schedule a repair.

So I schedule a repair, reboot, and the default Windows XP "Scandisk" (the light blue screen) goes into effect before XP boots. It scans for errors, does its thing, then reports that it has found NO PROBLEMS. Windows boots, I try Norton again, it finds file structure problems, asks to schedule a repair, rinse and repeat.

So there are apparently errors on my drive. Norton finds them but can't fix them because Windows has locked my drive/files.... yet Windows won't detect -- let alone fix -- the problems itself. Thanks, Microsoft.

Is there any way around this? Any way I can "unlock" my drive from XP's stranglehold and let a 3rd-party utility fix the errors? Any help would be great.

Thanks!

 

[Xentropy]

You've actually got two separate problems.

1) Norton is confusing you, and it's not your fault, it's just not very clear. If you check Fix Errors in Disk Doctor under XP, it'll ALWAYS tell you it needs to reboot to do the test. Your disk has no errors. Norton just basically has no Disk Doctor support for NTFS and bows out to chkdsk to handle this, and chkdsk on NTFS needs to run during a reboot while the OS isn't loaded.

2) The blue screen is a separate issue, and without more details on what that screen tells you, no one can really help you. What you need to do is go to Control Panel -> System, and head to the Advanced tab (? I think. Unfortunately I'm at work on a 2000 machine instead of my XP at home or I'd confirm this ), then change the Startup and Recovery options. In there, uncheck "Automatically Reboot", and then when you get a bluescreen it'll stay onscreen indefinitely, giving you plenty of time to read/write down the stuff it says. It's most likely a driver issue, and if so that screen will give you a xxxxxxxx.dll file that threw yyyyyyyy exception at zzzzzzzz address or some such. The name of the file that caused the problem is the important information. Hit reset to manually reboot the machine at your leisure.

I swear, XP's default autoreboot is the most annoying feature for those of us who try to troubleshoot other people's systems. When bluescreens didn't try to hide themselves, even clueless newbies would try to read back what the bluescreen said and give experts a clue as to how to proceed. Now it's just "the screen flashes blue and then the computer cycles off and back on". How helpful. Thanks Microsoft.

So try the above and come back with more info on the bluescreen. Most likely you just need to update a driver.

 

[WAZ]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, Norton actually does detect errors on my hard drive. When I turn off "Automatically Fix", then it will report that there are errors with my file structure. It can't fix them, though, due to WinXP's lock on my drive, and the default Scandisk that runs on reboot doesn't detect any errors.

Anyway, I turned off the "auto reboot" thing, and low and behold, I got a blue screen. This one said it found a problem, though it didn't list a specific file, and said to check or remove any new hardware (I don't have anything newly installed) or to run the Driver Verifier.

So I ran the driver verifier, set it to standard settings and to use all found drivers. It said I had to reboot, and I did. This time, I got a blue screen that said:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

And that if this was the first time I'd seen the error, it may be okay, yadda yadda, if you've seen this error before then use F8 for safe mode. So upon another reboot, I got yet another blue screen, this one saying:

IO SYSTEM VERIFICATION ERROR in STREAM.SYS (WDM DRIVER ERROR 216) [STREAM.SYS+550e at F9AY95QE]

and NOTHING ELSE. So I rebooted again, this time getting the "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" message again. Next time I went into safe mode, deleted the driver verifier settings, and was able to get into Windows normally again. But I'm pretty positive the problem is still in there somewhere. I can usually boot eventually, but not without a blue screen at least once before finally getting it working.

As far as WDM goes, the only signs I see of that are listed on in my device manager for my Sound Blaster Live card and my Hauppauge WinTV card (both PCI).

Any ideas from here? Thanks again for the help.

 

[alkemyst]

I got the IRQ error occasionally until I changed all my cards around....now it never happens....must have been a non-reported conflict of some sort.

 

[Turkey22]

for your drive go get the manufacturers diagnostic prog. Will be much more helpful.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: Turkey22
for your drive go get the manufacturers diagnostic prog. Will be much more helpful.

I'll second that.

What version of Norton SW are you running?

Thorin