Can I run chkdsk on an NTFS drive from a USB stick made bootable?

[sitalchauhan]

Baslically my brother's laptop is having problems and cannot boot into windows because of a problem with the Ntfs.sys (cannot even boot through safe mode)

I have found the solution, which is to run chkdsk on the NTFS hard drive. Everywhere recommends using the Windows XP install disc to go into the recovery console and run chkdsk through there.

However, my brother lives far away from myself and he does not have access to a WinXP install disc.

I was just wondering could I get him to make a bootable USB (he does not have a floppy drive) using the 'HP USB Disc Format Tool' as in this guide on his friend's laptop:
http://www.bay-wolf.com/usbmemstick.htm

and then could he boot from the usb and run chkdsk at the command prompt?

Or will chkdsk only work on an ntfs drive when in the recovery console using a WinXP disc?


Thanks so much

 

[Joe Average]

You're better off making yourself a proper UBCD4Win and keep it around for future use if needed. It's loaded with tools of all kinds and has proven itself to be a stable and very useful addition to any "tech toolkit". Highly recommended...

One tip: use a CD-RW (rewritable CD) for making one as they tend to be updated from time to time; might as well dedicate a rewritable just for UBDC4Win duties. You can also take the content of the UBCD4Win and transfer it to a USB stick using a tool called PE2USB - you can find it easily with Google.

 

[Ritorix]

Short answer is yes, you can. If his friend is running XP you can make a normal XP recovery disk on the USB. Or you can use various NTFS for DOS drivers and use a freedos or whatever bootable USB. Or boot into linux (CD, USB, whatever) and copy any still-working critical files from the NTFS partition if things are really broke.