[Essexboy]

Also are you running chkdsk /r as it appears you are just using chkdsk which will not repair the errors

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double clicking that works fine. right clicking and running as administrator does the usual "don't have permission" error.

[daveski]

double clicking that works fine. right clicking and running as administrator does the usual "don't have permission" error.

[Essexboy]

Could you confirm you are using the /R switch on chkdsk as the screenshots shown so far indicate it is not

[daveski]

the one that was left on overnight was chkdsk /r.  the one that i ran today was chkdsk /f because that's what it had suggested to do.

 

whenever i try running chkdsk /r it says it can't do it at the moment because the disk is locked (or something to that effect) and it can do the scan & fix when i next reboot, which I've done, but i don't get any indication of whether it was successful/fixed anything etc (if there's a log i have no idea where it is saved), whereas chkdsk at least gives me some idea of what's going on, even though it's not actually fixing anything, more using it as a check after each "proper" scan to see if it did anything.  

 

can give chkdsk /r another go if that'll help.

[Essexboy]

Chkdsk /r should ask to run at next reboot and then do it. Does it actually do the scan on reboot ? I think it may be time to look at a refresh

I can link you to a digital river download if you wish

[daveski]

it'll do the scan but it takes hours to do it, so I have no idea if it actually comes up and says anything was fixed or corrupted etc. last one was on 10% for about three hours, left it overnight and it was just on the login screen so if it said anything I missed it.

can do a refresh, but not having done one before I have no idea what I'm doing - will that wipe any data I have?

[Essexboy]

Refresh retains all your personal data and files but you may lose some programmes there is a nice explanation here http://www.howtogeek...r-windows-8-pc/

[daveski]

nice option to have - didn't work for me though unfortunately, got an error saying that there was a problem when trying to refresh my PC and that no changes were made.

looks like I'm going down the reset/reformat route then! not much of a problem will just backup my stuff to my external HD and go from there.

[Essexboy]

I have just noticed that if you have 8.1 installed you will need a disc with 8.1 on it to do a refresh... Guess I will need to burn an 8.1 disc myself, although I do run a monthly image on my system

 

I am sorry that we are unable to resolve this, but, there are times when you need to cut your losses.  Otherwise we could be working on this for weeks

[daveski]

No probs - can't say you didn't try!

 

Had a bit of a nightmare trying to reinstall Windows, turned out that the disc I'd burnt with Windows 8.1 on it didn't burn properly, which I only discovered after I'd formatted my HD, which made it quite hard to burn another copy!  Ended up doing the slowest burn possible on a Mac, worked and everything seems to be going nicely, even have the fringe benefit of getting rid of all the Dell clutter that got preinstalled for me.

 

Thanks for all your help, much appreciated

[Essexboy]

Glad that at last we have a result, once more my apologies for my inability to fix this

[Essexboy]

Since this issue appears to be resolved ... this Topic has been closed. Glad we could help.

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