InspectorMustache

Yeah, the hard drive is S-ATA. I put it into another computer and ran chkdsk over it (so that's basically your suggestion, I guess, just executed differently) and now it seems to work all right, at least in that second computer. Gonna switch it back into its original machine and see how things turned out... Thanks for your help, though. I already considered running chkdsk through a boot disc but couldn't find an appropriate one. I'll remember that Hiren CD for similar problems in the future.

Hi everyone! Yesterday, I updated and ran Defraggler over my D partition, the one that doesn't contain the XP system files. I set the automatic shutdown after defragmentation option and let it run through the night. This morning, my computer had shut down so I guess defragmentation was successful...? Somehow my hard drive got messed up in the process, though. At least it seems that way. Every time I turn my computer on, it boots fine until after the Windows XP logo screen. After that I just get a black screen for a couple of minutes. If I wait long enough I get to the XP login screen. It's all incredibly slow and laggy. After logging in, it takes forever and is apparently unable to load any system files. I get a lot of error messages for different system processes and the computer pretty much locks up. Running XP in safe mode etc. gives me exactly the same results. I already tried the repair option from the XP install disc but it tells me that no hard drives could be detected. Any idea what might have happened there and how to fix it? Defraggler always worked fine for me until my updating it yesterday. Thanks in advance!!