Last night when I turned on my computer a blue screen popped up and said something about the disc not being consistent.

Any idea what this means?

My computer is running fine and dandy, but that has never happened before and I don't know what it means.

Sounds like you need to run a scan disk.
OPen My computer > RIGHT click C: drive > properties > tools tab > error checking > check BOTH boxes > start > click YES on the error message > reboot.

Now this will go through a checking process on your next reboot.

Also might be worth running my maintenance C&P:


When was the last time you did some serious maintenance on your system ?

System maintenance includes:
Defrag
FULL patching
Virus scanning
Spyware scanning
removal of rubish files

Defrag is an inbuilt function in XP.
Open My Computer > Right click C: > Tools Tab and its there.

To make sure everything is running fine run both anti virus and anti spyware apps in normal AND safe modes. (make sure that they are updated first ! ;)) (AVG (http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1) is good and free AV)
(A couple of good removal tools are Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/) and Adaware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/))

ALso an on line virus and spyware scanner is Trend Housecall (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/)

Just a note: actively running two AV's on one machine can cause problems.
So if you are thinking about it make sure your current one is disabled first.
Same thing applies to online scanners as well.

Removal of junk files is easy with CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com) a free app that does exactly what

If all this fails then a repair install may be in order:

Here's (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx) the official Micro$oft way of doing it,
and Here's (http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=138) one with screen shots.

Basically this installs windows over the top of your current setup.
So you don't loose any information you already have.

This lot should resolve your issue.

Thank you so much! I knew I could rely on AMHD's computer geniuses... lol.

I'll give it a try :)

If you could post the exact error message that would help too.

If you could post the exact error message that would help too.

I don't remember what it was... sorry :(

Ok Curlyben, I did what you told me to do and this is what happened.

In Stage 1 it said Deleting corrupt attribute record (128, " ") (it said this about a million times)

In state 2 it said correcting error in index $I30 for file 164787, and then it said recovering orphaned file a million times (after orphaned file it gave the file name, it was stuff like myspace and junk like that, even some stuff from this forum)

In stage 3 it said Inserting data attribute into file.

In stage 4 it said Verifying file data.

And in stage 5 it said verifying free space.

I don't know what any of this means, but I just wanted to give you a follow up to make sure I did the right thing that you told me to do :)

Sounds like it found some corruption in your FAT or NTFS and repaired it.

Ok so then it should be OK now?

For the time being.

Curlyben.. thank you so much for the maintenance tips! My computer runs like a lightning bolt now! :)

No worries.
Just make sure you take the time to do them regularly.
Every month should be more than enough, more often if you do a lot of surfing/downloading/installing.

Oh trust me I will take the time to do it regularly.

Thanks again! :)