Yesterday, while playing a game, my PC froze up while I went to grab some lunch. I thought restarting it would help. However, when I booted it back up, it prompted me for a disk check, which I agreed to since I didn't want to risk any corruption. Unfortunately, that check took forever and was still stuck at Stage 1 (33%) when I checked this morning. After leaving it overnight, I powered off the PC because I needed to use it, but now I can't log in. The screen just hangs on the 'Welcome' message with a loading icon. I've started running a 'chkdsk /f' command in the command prompt to check for corrupted files on my C drive. I'm feeling really stressed about this! Am I on the right track here? What's going on with my PC?
2 Answers
It's pretty much expected that interrupting a file system repair would lead to trouble like you're experiencing now. You probably took away your best chance of getting the system to boot up again. I recommend trying a Live Linux session to back up your files and then consider replacing the drive if it continues to act up.
If your drive is failing, it's best to stop performing further operations on it. The safest way to retrieve your important files is to boot from a Linux USB. Once you're in, you can easily drag and drop whatever you need onto an external storage device.
I realize now my drive is likely corrupted too. I managed to save some files, but unfortunately, I lost a few. Do you think I should start looking for a new drive?
Copying your files like that might be a smarter move.