Windows 10: Factory MFT on a brand new HP Windows 10?

I am preparing a brand new HP 15-f272wm laptop bought today from Walmart (Windows 10) and before I install another OS I thought I would make a backup image of the entire hard drive using Macrium Reflect 6.1 build 1225 (most recent).

This computer was turned on only once, and after it booted to the first point where user input was required (making sure it worked OK and wasn't DOA) I shut it down and removed the hard drive. I put the drive into a USB 3.0 enclosure and connected it to my Windows 7 system to perform the backup.

Macrium starts the backup, but aborts with: MFT corrupt - Error code = 6. Please run 'chkdsk G: /r' WTF? Why does Macrium think this is an MFT drive? Windows 7 disk manager clearly shows it to be a GPT with an EFI partition.

I am concerned that running the chkdsk command may corrupt the drive, especially if Windows is confused about the type of drive it is. I'm sure the factory image was created through a standard sysprep process or whatever they may now call the equivalent of it for Windows 10. Since I didn't proceed the image should still be pristine factory fresh, right?

Another concern I have is running the Windows 7 chkdsk on a Windows 10 drive. I would hope that GPT and NTFS should be solid, unchanging standards, but this is Micro$oft and they have a way of doing things that make assuming things like no changes to GPT and NTFS between Win7 and Win10 seem risky to me.

I'm very disappointed and suspect that Micro$oft has intentionally made it difficult to perform even basic tasks like making a backup image of a disk for protection in the event of disk failure, or in my case to try another OS.

I really don't want to go through all the rigamaroll of setting up Windows 10, activating it etc just to take a backup image. It was a bit of a PITA to remove the drive from this system, it isn't accessible through an access panel, rather the entire top half of the system has to be removed, so I need to make the backup of the drive before I reassemble it back into the laptop. I could try to eliminate the USB enclosure and connect it directly to an extra SATA port, but the enclosure has worked well on all other drives, regardless of partition type, MFT, GPT and even Apple OSX GPT disks, so I don't think that is likely to help.

I would appreciate any insight or workaround procedures or suggestions any of you Win 10 gurus may have.

Thx!

:)

 

Brand New HP Pavilion/Windows 10 Factory Install/Periodically Lose Search Box, Right Click Context Menus

I had lots of trouble getting the latest Windows Update package installed on my eight year old HP, so I just bought a brand new one. Windows 10 came as a factory install. (64 Bit, Home, 8G Ram)

1. All available Windows Updates have been installed.

2. The PC runs all the latest drivers --- I have checked

After a period of time (I don't know how long), this happens:

A. Windows 10 Search Box becomes inoperative.

B. At the same time, none of the apps pinned to the Task bar respond to a right click. Left click does work and opens the app.

C. Left clicking on the Windows ICON, lower left does not produce the expected display of apps (nothing happens). Right click on same ICON works.

D. System is returned to normal by rebooting.

There seem to MANY threads about this problem or something very similar.

I have run SFC Scannow as administrator, and nothing unusual is reported.

Any new thinking on this? Particularly frustrated since this is a brand new PC with a factory installed Windows 10.

 

Brand New HP Pavilion/Windows 10 Factory Install/Periodically Lose Search Box, Right Click Context Menus

PC has been stable now for three days --- none of subject problems noted --- after installation of Windows 10 Anniversary update. Thread closed.

 

You are confused.

MFT is the Master File Table, and is present on any NTFS filesystem.

You are thinking of MBR, which is Master Boot Record vs GPT which is Guid Partition Table.

MFT's exist in both MBR and GPT partitions. If it says the MFT is corrupt, then it has nothing to do with MBR or GPT.

 

Yes, absolutely right! Thx for pointing this out what should have been obvious - must be time for bed *Sleepy

However, I don't understand why a brand new factory image would have a corrupted file system.

 

How did you do the shutdown?

 

Well, not being intimately familiar with Win10, and given the OS was not fully initialized anyway, I saw no obvious way to shut it down other than the power switch, tho in retrospect I never even tried to raise the charms menu or move the mouse to the edge of the display.

I really dislike the new approach to UI design, such as Windows 10 employs, that being a minimalist presentation of info to guide users in possible actions. Even Micro$oft realized they took this approach too far in Windows 8 which is why in Windows 8.1 they added the big @$$ed upward right pointing arrow to display the charms menu.

But I digress. I reasoned that a single, quick press of the power button should prompt for shutdown or restart, or at the very least perform a clean shutdown. That's what I did. I did NOT hold the power button but only pressed it once, normally. The system took less than 3 seconds to shut off and all lights were extinguished. I waited for another 10 - 15 seconds to see if there were signs of sleep or hibernation such as blinking power led but there was none so I then removed the battery and the hard drive.

Since I planned on installing a new OS and given my obvious mistake of confusing MFT for MBR, I decided to take the risk of running chkdsk as Macrium suggested. Here are the results of those runs. Macrium still fails with the same "corrupt MFT" message even after chkdsk reports no problems. The 2nd run of chkdsk (ran in read only mode) was done as a quick verification of the drive's status that no errors existed. The first run took well over 2 hours as I recall. I actually went to bed before it finished.

Code: C:\Windows\System32>chkdsk G: /r The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is Windows. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)... 0 percent complete. (0 of 183040 file records processed) Deleting corrupt attribute record (128, "") from file record segment 115. 183040 file records processed. File verification completed. 2230 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. 16052 EA records processed. 46 reparse records processed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)... 10 percent complete. (187959 of 249066 index entries processed) Deleting index entry FontCache-S-1-5-21-3155148101-3444798715-1280424306-500.dat in index $I30 of file 16305. Deleting index entry FONTCA~1.DAT in index $I30 of file 16305. 249066 index entries processed. Index verification completed. CHKDSK is scanning unindexed files for reconnect to their original directory. Recovering orphaned file ETWRTD~3.ETL (117) into directory file 17244. Recovering orphaned file EtwRTDiagtrack-Listener.etl (117) into directory file 1 7244. 10 percent complete. (5 of 7 unindexed files scanned) Recovering orphaned file ResCache.mni (119) into directory file 16249. 7 unindexed files scanned. Recovering orphaned file 254650~1.PRI (41408) into directory file 16270. Recovering orphaned file 2546507356.pri (41408) into directory file 16270. CHKDSK is recovering remaining unindexed files. 4 unindexed files recovered. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)... 183040 file SDs/SIDs processed. Security descriptor verification completed. Inserting data attribute into file 115. 33015 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... Repairing Usn Journal $J data stream. Usn Journal verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)... 183024 files processed. File data verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)... 106445265 free clusters processed. Free space verification is complete. Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute. Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap. Windows has made corrections to the file system. 467984383 KB total disk space. 41848344 KB in 134914 files. 89816 KB in 33017 indexes. 0 KB in bad sectors. 265159 KB in use by the system. 65536 KB occupied by the log file. 425781064 KB available on disk. 4096 bytes in each allocation unit. 116996095 total allocation units on disk. 106445266 allocation units available on disk. C:\Windows\System32>chkdsk G: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is Windows. WARNING! F parameter not specified. Running CHKDSK in read-only mode. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)... 183040 file records processed. File verification completed. 2230 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. 16052 EA records processed. 46 reparse records processed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)... 249072 index entries processed. Index verification completed. 0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)... 183040 file SDs/SIDs processed. Security descriptor verification completed. 33017 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... 1008 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed. Windows has checked the file system and found no problems. 467984383 KB total disk space. 44920352 KB in 134917 files. 89816 KB in 33018 indexes. 0 KB in bad sectors. 265671 KB in use by the system. 65536 KB occupied by the log file. 422708544 KB available on disk. 4096 bytes in each allocation unit. 116996095 total allocation units on disk. 105677136 allocation units available on disk. C:\Windows\System32>[/quote]

 

There is no charms menu on Windows 10. To shut it down, press the Windows key on your keyboard or the Start Button on your taskbar to bring up the Start Menu, click on Power, then shutdown. Or use the WinX controls to select the shutdown or signout method.

 

OK then, so I did the most logical thing, since the system was not yet initialized there would be no start menu available.

Does anyone here wonder why I want to avoid Windows 10? It should be obvious to everyone except Micro$oft maximalists who believe Windoze is THE platform. I never have been much of a status quo kindof guy tho.

 

From this Repairing MFT , chkdsk is not the answer -
"It is almost always better to make a copy of the data, reformat the volume, and copy the data back to it."

 

Duh, "making a copy" is precisely what I'm trying to do! Reading the info you linked, mostly the discussion is dealing with problems trying to use chkdsk on the active system drive. That isn't the case here.

Also, I see using "copy" and restore as far more risky than using Micro$oft tools to repair the drive. However, I am not convinced this issue is a matter of a corrupt drive, now that chkdsk gives it a clean bill of health. Perhaps it's a bug in Macrium, perhaps some unusual condition / state of the drive Micro$oft intentionally mandates OEMs to employ to thwart drive cloning as a way to prevent OS piracy. Just speculation, but I wouldn't put it past them.

 

You want to avoid Windows 10 because all of its features aren't up and running before it is installed? I do not think you would find a shutdown button on ANY operating system, before it is up and running.

 

I totally agree, but you miss the point of why I want to avoid Win10. It has nothing to do with a lack of power / shutdown before completing initialization. It has everything to do with a very long history I have with Micro$oft and how they choose to do business, some practices of which I have described in these posts.

Here's one example: How long did it take me to go from first press of power switch on a brand new system to get to where I could interact with it? It took FAR longer than other operating systems, including Windows 7.

I just find Windoze does not stack up to other operating systems, primarily unix variants. It is less efficient on resources, performs more poorly and is less reliable by design, primarily due to the registry. All op systems have their drawbacks, I just find those in Windoze harder to deal with, not to mention the philosophical issues I have with proprietary software --- woops, I just did *Wink

 

Well you have your reasons I suppose. I happen to like the way they do business. I haven't had any problems what-so-ever with Microsoft.

 

If you can't access the data, obviously the drive is toast.