I can not run Check Disk except from the Recovery Console which is a pain. When a Check Disk is set to run and repair errors on restart, it gives a message of "Check Disk has experenced an unexpected error. Finished checking the disk". Check Disk thru Recovery Console claims to have fixed errors but when it is checked thru normal means again, the same "Unexpected Error" message occures. Is there a fix?

Try a quick fix. In Recovery Console, instead of just chdsk, try chkdsk /r (don't forget the space between chkdsk and /r. This will repair or replace damaged, missing or corrupt system files in XP.

chkdsk /r locates and attempts to restorere bad sectors and/or recover readable information. chkdsk will need to be run before any other recovery is attempted. first run chkdsk /p (much less time consuming) to see if there are bad sectors then if bad sectors are found run chkdsk /r

the best check is from dos from bootable disc with the utilities available from the hard drive manufacturer.

if chkdsk and/or hard drive utilities can't fix the problem then a new hard drive will be likely in the near future.

if no recovery is possible from bad sector/s then chkdsk marks them as bad and no data will be written to the bad sector/s

What is the 'P' parameter? As far as I am aware, there are only the following--chkdsk [volume:][[Path] FileName] [/f] [/v] [/r] [/x] [/i] [/c] [/l[:size]]
Chkdsk is diagnostic only. It doesn't fix anything. It may be faster, but running chkdsk /r will fix a problem if it finds one, something he'd have to do if chkdsk found anything. I believe what you're referring to as /p is actually /f (for fix). /r not only finds, identifies and attempts to restore bad sectors, it looks at the Master Table and repairs damaged files by comparing information.

/p is read only mode. it runs fast and will indicate errors. /r is a surface test and is slow. run /p then if errors are indicated run /f or if bad sectors are found then run /r