What to check on PC after a power outage?

Hello guys,

So I just bought a brand new PC and while I was in the main menu of a game (GTA V) someone caused a power outage, thus cutting the power to my PC.

After turning the electricity and then my PC back on, I did the following to check if there are any problems:

1. Run checkdisk on my SSD; says there are no problems and 0 bad files
2. Run "/sfc scannow" from the command prompt: it found no integrity violations
3. Run CrystalDiskInfo to check S.M.A.R.T data for my SSD: Health is at 100% and all the parameters that I should worry about have a raw value of 0 (no errors).

Do these tests show that there is nothing wrong with the PC? Or is there anything else that I should check in addition to these tests, like running a thorough "chkdsk /r" command or a RAM diagnostic test for example?

I might be exaggerating but it's a brand new PC that I don't want to wreck from the start.

Plankton said:

Once you restart the PC and it turned on and is functioning correctly....I'd say your OK and didn't need to run those. If the power outage did some damage it would show on the restart.

That said....I would invest in a surge protector power strip. Those are designed to take the hit first before the surge gets to your PC. Then if you really want to go the extra mile.....invest in a UPS (uninterruptible power supply), a battery backup for the PC. This way if the power does go out, the UPS will give you time to shut down correctly.

Thanks for the heads up. The PC is indeed connected to a power strip but quite an old one and I read that a surge protector could wear off over time. That being said, I read that my PSU (Coolermaster Lite 700) has several features to protect against power outage (OCP/OVP/SCP/OPP/OTP) but I'm not sure if this is sufficent enough to protect my PC.

Power outages during a windows update can make the computer unbootable.
A manual power off can cause problems with either the operating system or registry.
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Try3 said:

Johnny,

If you were not updating at the time then you are probably not going to see any problems appearing as a result.

If you do find any odd symptoms turning up then, as your initial response, create a new user and see if the symptoms continue for that account. It is possible that you'll find any symptoms confined to the user profile that you were signed in to when the incident occurred.

I think a user profile problem is much more likely to result from that incident than any system or hardware problem. I am not saying it is likely, merely that it is more likely than more serious alternatives. One of the tasks that Windows does during a properly controlled shutdown is close the user profile down but, during that incident, it was not able to [this might be compared to, say, pulling the plug while you were editing a Word document; if you are lucky then you will just be able to re-open it then find it at its last saved version but if you are unlucky you might find the file structure has been corrupted].

Denis

Thanks for the info. Does checkdisk scan every file on the SSD? If the log shows 0 bad files, does that mean that there are no corrupted files whatsoever? Or will this need a more thorough scan?

Try3 said:

Johnny,

ChkDsk examines the file system not the files themselves.
- If ChkDsk gives you a clean bill of health then it means Windows will be able to find the files when they are called up.
- ChkDsk would not know if the internal structure of a file was corrupt - if, say, a Word document format had been messed up. Only Word can tell you that when you try to edit a corrupted file.
- Running ChkDsk was a sensible step to take but it only does what it is designed to do .

Denis

And how about the "/sfc scannow" command? Does it scan the internal structure of the (Windows) files?

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