Last month, I experienced a PC malfunction on my main PC that I have never
encountered before. Although I have been around long enough to have owned PCs
from the original IBM PC onwards, I have never really understood the Windows OS
very well. Today's NT-based Windows OS leaves me utterly confused. I have no
idea as to whether my problem is a Windows problem, a SeaMonkey e-mail problem,
a hardware problem, or some combination of all three. Accordingly, I need some
advice, either on-list or off list and at no more than a moderately complex
level, to assist me in sorting out what happened and how to restore my main PC
to proper operating condition.
The PC at issue is a 32 bit Dell Precision 650 with dual 3.2 gHz CPUs running
XP-Pro SP3, fully updated as of 11-30-2013. My browser/e-mail client is
SeaMonkey, v.2.21.
Because of advice given to me early in my PC history, I have long had the habit
of dividing my hard drives into fairly small partitions to facilitate easier
backup (i.e., I have the SeaMonkey executables and e-mail files in a partition
shared with nothing else). Another partition is devoted only to Microsoft
Office executables and files and my C:\ partition only contains the OS and its
files plus those application files that must reside in the same partition as the
OS).
The first hint that something was going wrong came as I logged out of the
SeaMonkey e-mail client and an error message flashed for an instant saying
something about '... delayed write ...' (details of the error message were not
caught) and the PC rebooted. As the PC rebooted, the OS indicated that two
partitions (the partition containing the SeaMonkey files and the partition
containing the Microsoft Office files) needed to be evaluated 'for consistency',
whatever that means. When I tried to re-initiate the SeaMonkey e-mail client,
it didn't work, referring me to the SeaMonkey wizard asking that I establish an
e-mail account. As there had been four e-mail accounts just a few minutes prior
to whatever went wrong, I used Windows Explorer to look at what files were
actually still in my SeaMonkey partition. It seemed that everything that should
have been in the partition, so far as I could remember, was still there
(including my substantial archive of the actual e-mail messages). In addition,
I found a new file with a bunch of zeros in the name which I think I have seen
on other failure occasions called 'lost chains', whatever that means. I quickly
copied all of the e-mail message files to a CD-R and turned the PC off.
In the past couple of days, I have begun trying to sort out what happened. When
I start the PC, the OS indicates that two partitions (the partition containing
the SeaMonkey files and the partition containing the Microsoft Office files)
need to be evaluated 'for consistency' but doesn't write anything additional to
the SeaMonkey partition and has never added anything to the Microsoft Office
partition. Does this mean that the OS has found something wrong with the file
indexes in those two partitions? How do I fix this problem? Everything else on
the PC - including the Microsoft Office partition - appears to operate properly.
Alternatively, do I have to reformat the two partitions at issue and reinstall
all of the software in those two partitions or what? Could this problem be an
indication of an impending hard drive failure? Is this really a Microsoft OS
problem and should I refer my dilemma to a Microsoft forum? Why are at least
some of my e-mail initiation [profile (?)] files now apparently missing? Could
it have been something that I can't imagine? Help!
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