[Radoman]

I re-imaged the original hard disk from an old backup using Acronis. The CHKDSK problem disappeared. (doesn't look like Acronis' fault) So, it looks to me like a reinstall might be the final solution for folks who experience this issue.

I have back ups at the ready, so I figure what the heck, I install a copy of the "suspect" hard drive as a secondary and boot. (I want to know what's happening here to be able to stop it in the future.) Surprise, the CHKDSK errors have reappeared in Dos on the system drive.

My old back up image had Norton Antivirus 2005 installed. (yes I know it's bad, it's an old back up) I initiate a scan of the "suspect" drive with Norton. I look away for a second, and the scan window disappears. I try again. Scan window comes up for less than a second this time. Looks like pretty classic malware behavior. Target Norton. I try scanning with updated NOD32 and AVG. Both programs see no problems.

There it sits. Mocking me. Step 2 of 3, "checking indexes" hangs obviously at 25% on this particular drive when the problem is active. Then I get mixed error messages relating to random file numbers, (always different) but there is a common "index $I30 of file ****" message listed.

This sure looks hostile and undiscovered to me. Nod32 is supposed to be great for "in the wild" virii, but doesn't see a thing. I wonder how widespread it is? Anyone else still getting permanent errors when running CHKDSK from a command prompt?