Best Posts in Thread: Computer Problems (50k Prize)

Files don't just corrupt on their own, much less files critical to the OS itself. It's most likely a bad driver or a virus or something along those lines mucking with things. And a grinding sound would indicate a crashed head, in which case you wouldn't even get to start up repair. C'mon dude.

@Qaztar Your best bet is to follow NuckleMuckle's advice and read up on how to do rmdir. Getting rid of your Users folder would probably free up enough space, so doing "rmdir users" would be your best bet. I'd try it if I had a free computer.

 

Wow, the OP changed a lot since my first response. Thanks for the offer of a reward. It's not necessary, but I appreciate the gesture.

More importantly, the additional info. Knowing that you have a 1TB secondary HD, you have another option - rather than wiping out whole directory trees, you can move them to E.

The most important spec you left out is OS version. Some of the command-line utilities change names, new ones added, old ones deprecated, etc. I'll go ahead and assume you're at least at Windows 7, which means the command you want to copy entire directory structures is: ROBOCOPY.

This one has a ton of options, so the help page can be pretty intimidating, but this is probably all you want:

ROBOCOPY [source directory] [destination directory] /COPYALL - if you want to do the copy, then verify success, before issuing a separate RM command to delete the source files

ROBOCOPY [source directory] [destination directory] /MOVE - to do the copies and deletes all in a single step

I recommend using fully-qualified directory names in the command, so you don't make a mistake. So rather than navigating to C:\Users and issuing it with a relative name: (ROBOCOPY myuser E:\myuser /MOVE), it would be: ROBOCOPY C:\Users\myuser E:\myuser /MOVE

After you've cleared enough space, I'd recommend running CHKDSK against the SSD. Those can still get bad "sectors," just for reasons that are different than those from spinning disks. In fact: http://cs.iupui.edu/~fgsong/csci402/ssd.pdf

I see that "1000 supported writes" a lot whenever I look at home SSD technologies. I suggest you find out what kind you have. If it's 3-bit or more, you've got a device that is not a good choice for your OS install, as certain parts of your OS are very high in write/delete operations, like the virtual memory. And unlike a spinning disk, the SSD controller sprays that data around seemingly randomly, so that virtual memory usage will not be limited to particular sectors. CHKDSK will help you there... if it flags a lot of space as unusable, that's evidence that this SSD is nearing its end of life, and you might want to consider replacing it ASAP. On the other hand, if it tests good, you might still be wise to consider, once everything is running again, to, at a very minimum, updating your configuration to specify that the virtual memory should be on the other drive.

 

50k Prize for Anyone who Comes up With a Solution Which Keeps my Personal Files
10k Prize for Anyone who Comes up With a Solution Which Loses my Personal Files
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Sup meep!

Things aren't great. I woke up this morning, turned on my computer, and the dreaded "preparing automatic repair" showed up. I restarted multiple times, but to no avail. I then went to the troubleshooting tab, and clicked "Reset my PC" and then "Keep My Files."

However, when I clicked this, it informed me that I dont have enough disc space on my C drive, where windows is installed. The drive has 120 GB. I can also access the command prompt. Is there any way that I could clear everything but Windows in the C Drive by using the command prompt?

Ill post some pictures when I get home.
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Also, when giving answers, please try your VERY hardest to come up with ways for me to be able to keep my personal files. If it is 100% not possible, that is okay.
System Specs:
OS: Windows 10
Motherboard: ASUS ROG
GPU: nVidia GTX 980 Ti
CPU: Intel i7 5600k
Hard Drive 1/C: 120 GB SSD
Hard Drive 2/E: 1000 GB