Hey guys, just a quick question for you more experienced techies out there. Last night I had to unplug my pc and take out the majority of parts to get the motherboard out and replace the chipset fan.

When I plugged it back in and started windows up, I was greeted with a buckload of

"Windows - corrupt file the file or directory C:\xxxxxx\xxxxxxx\xxxxxx.xx is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chdsk utility."

messages (xxxxx's in place of whatever dozens of files were mentioned)

I ran a check / repair disk app, it indeed seems to have fixed the majority of things. Now however I have a buttload of software that crash when I spark it up. (iTunes, Skype, Firefox couldn't seem to read CSS, then eventually fixed itself (O_o))

My question is :

AVG/Avast don't seem to find any virus. What else could have caused this?

Now that the problems are fixed, should I be worried about my hard drive sploding on me or am I safe and sound?

Did check disk fix my problems and thus now I'm just left with the option of reinstalling what is crapped up as I find it?

Durned computers v_v

Edit note : The corrupted files did not stop windows from booting. However, I recieved these messages at the "User selection" screen on start up. I opened up my User account and got to my desktop fine. After a while some more warnings popped up.

I think you should be fine, judging on what I have read. If things seem even just a little weird, I would just reformat.

New question :

Could a System Restore to a few days ago potentially fix problematic softwares like itunes and skype, or could I cause more damage?

I'd guess you lost a sector (that is, your harddrive is failing) but the timing is probably coincidental. Unless you dropped the disc or something. Did you run the disk checker from your bios? Running one inside windows will find filesystem problems, but might not be able to detect physical damage.

The disk checker I did was the one scheduled by windows on reboot.

It did seem to clean up 'bad clusters' and some such.

Also : Its a pair of Seagate hard drives set up in a Raid.

System Restore couldn't hurt. As far as I'm concerned, it's a little bit like Voodoo magic as to what it fixes and what it doesn't.

Nope, System Restore didn't do ****.

I'm seeing some wierdish things happening though.

Itunes isn't running because its quicktime counterpart is bugged. The thing is, no matter how I try it quicktime is just stuck where it is. Uninstall or repairing gives me a fatal error, and if I try to delete it from its folder, it gives me the typical "check if system is full or files locked" when they are neither.

**** I hate computers.

Could it have been caused when you set the HD on that industrial electromagnet?

Looks like a clean install is in your future.

boot to recovery console from windows cd and run chkdsk

if it says you have unrecoverable errors than one of your drives is boned

Also make sure SMART is enabled in your BIOS, it may pick up and tell you exactly what's wrong if your drive is failing. Although even if SMART doesn't report anything it can still be dying.

Get everything off the drive that you consider valuable.