I saved my document, walked away from the computer, came back and saw the black screen of death.. with only the words: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. Everything I found on the net (including Microsoft) told me to run chkdsk/r . It took me a day to find the one add'l file it needed (autochk.exe), and the chkdsk began. Well that was over 48 hours ago! I have a 60G drive... should the chkdsk still be going? I mistakenly failed to include the drive in question (there are 4 partitions and only the NTSF partition -25G was a problem... I'm thinking). Anyway it's testing the entire disk. I hear occassional ticks and spins, so it's doing something... but 50+ hours??? What happens if I turn off the computer and just try a reboot? Will it cause further corruption? Pls advise. Thanks.

Ooops... I forgot to mention. This is a brand new computer and I hadn't transferred my data over. Here's what's on the partitions... FAT32 - Hidden partition with the HP Recovery files. Not sure how much stuff that is, but the partition was about 5G NTSF - WindowsXP O/S, Office 2000, plus whatever junk came preloaded on the HP. This partition is about 25G. FAT32 - Windows98 O/S.. nothing else cause I'm stuck without a completely functional video driver for NVidia 440. This partition is about 10G FAT32 - Data... less than a gig... well, just a gazillion versions of the NVidia drivers I tried to install, and some other driver folders for other hardware conflicts I had to figure out. This partition is about 15-20G

It won't take that long. Also, you should run chkdsk or scandisk at the dos prompt or command prompt, but not in windows or command window. Bye

Chkdsk /r checks every sector on the hard drive, much like a thorough scandisk on other Windows' versions. There could be a lot of bad sectors and it could take a very long time to fix. HP lays an image of the operating system on the hard drive, and I don'y think they do a good job of checking the hard drive beforehand. The same happened with my 20GB HP hard drive, and it took several days to get all the bad sectors marked. I would complain to HP and demand that they fix it. If you know who the hard drive manufacturer is, you could download a diagnostic program from them that runs off a floppy and find out just how bad the drive is. There is also a chance it could be a bad cable or defective motherboard. Use that HP warranty right away before you find more problems later.

Maybe you can try running chkdsk without the surface scanning option. According to my experience, restarting computer while chkdsk or disk defragmenter is running will not cause any corruption. But I encouraged you to wait for it to finish. The stop message(blue-screen error) is sometime caused by high temperature inside your computer. Try open it up and use a fan blowing at it. Be careful while the case is opened. The internal electronic components will be easily damaged by static electricity! Also try certain utilities like Norton WinDoctor to scan your PC for software problems.

Sounds like a crashed hard drive! Get it replaced!

If you have anything else running at the sqame time and it or windows is updating the disk, you could be causing it to restart from the beginning over and over. You might try running in safe mode.