boot-time chkdsk operation never completes

[abarbieri]

Hello,

I have being experiencing this problem from the very first day I have received the t61p (and still experiencing it after a UK service).

it's very simple to reproduce (100% of the times in my case), simply perform a 'chkdsk c: /r /f' which will trigger a chkdsk operation during the following system boot.

during the following system boot the chkdsk operation chugs along very happily for about 70 minutes reaching stage 5 of 5 and around 80% completion when all of a sudden the HHD disk activity LED goes inactive and it seems the disk spins down. at this point the chkdsk operation hangs forever and I have to perform a manual power cycle to recover/restart the system.

this issue is reproduced no matter which Power Saving I select nor having the system docked (Advanced Mini-Dock) or undocked, on battery or on mains.

whenever I perform low level tests (via the BIOS option) or booting from CD, I can test the HDD for hours and it always successfully terminate the tests.

If I remove the HDD and place it in an external enclosure (USB 2.0 interface) and perform an equivalent chkdsk operation whilst mounted on another WinXP system, this too completes successfully (and it takes about 2 hours to complete).

I am utterly baffled by this behavior...

I have another 250GB 2.5" SATA disk in a HDD bay adapter and I can perform the same chkdsk /r /f operation (not at boot-time) without any problems.

I really don't believe it is an HDD problem (I have the ST916023AS model 160GB, 7200rpm).

Is anyone experiencing the same problem? Any remedies?

many thanks,

andrea

[Bajpai]

I have also noticed this on my T61. In fact I have upgraded to Diskeeper Professional. I opted for Boot Defrag, which also requires boot time checkdisk.

Since then the application stands disabled because, the chkdsk command never got completed.

I have lost the ability to defragment the hard disk.

I look forward to resolution of the issue.

Sushil

[Rdizzle]

I'm having this exact same issue. Anyone figure out a solution to this yet? Is this a Lenovo BIOS issue?

Message Edited by Rdizzle on 02-20-2008 12:42 PM

[andyP Community SuperMod]

RichK may have found the reason for this, see his post in TPF.

[abarbieri]

Hello andyP,

What rihk is reporting is a different issue altogether I believe. Quoting "If R&R 4.2 is installed, the "dirty bit" is ignored at startup."

I experienced this issue from day 1, hour 1 after having received the t61p back in november 2007.

At that time I believe the version was 4.10.314.0.

cheers,

andrea

[Bajpai]

In my case rihk's diagnosis may well be correct. I have indeed adjusted the partition using Acronis Disk Director. I have also created an Acronis True Image Hidden Partition on a new partition to save the back-up image files.

The suggested resolution is to uninstall the R&R 4.2. I appear to have faith in R&R, particularly because it comes from Lenovo (although some would sight this to be a reason to get rid of it).

Anyway I presume that if the issue has reached Lenovo, they would do something about it.

I can sure leave the situation as is. But my worry is whether it makes the machine vulnerable to trouble in any way if the chkdsk function does not work.

[abarbieri]

Hello BajPai,

ignoring the 'dirty bit' does not explain why the boot-time chkdsk operation hangs after about 70 minutes (in my case)...

it might make chkdsk skip the scheduled operation altogether, but that's another issue.

I have to say, not being able to complete a chkdsk operation is very unnerving. I sincerely hope Lenovo can come up with a solution. I did have the laptop serviced for this issue and the graphics one in the UK. Rather unfortunately only one issue got solved.

cheers,

andrea

PS just checked, it's quite likely the R&R reported issue is about clearing the dirty flag set by a chkdsk /f operation and hence disabling the scheduled boot-time operation. Nothing to do at all with the issue reported in this thread.

Message Edited by abarbieri on 02-21-2008 03:14 PM

[Bajpai]

Andrea,

What you say sure makes sense, and it does appear to apply in my case as well.

Thanks for pointing out.

[Calabrache]

Hi, that might help - hopefully

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=T_Series_Thinkpads&message.id=3057&jump=true

regards

[Rdizzle]

I have never had RR4.2 installed and am experiencing this problem. I will test this by booting off the Vista CD and running chkdsk /r there. If it happens there, then I'm suspecting it is a BIOS related issue.