Question: I have a question about the Linux Operating System. During the middle of the initial boot-up process, I get a message that says:

“Checking root filesystem
/contains a file system with errors, check forced
/:
Unattached inode 1966
/: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY
(i.e. without –a or –p options)
[FAILED]”

When rebooting the PC, it stops at this point with every reboot. It just started to do this all of a sudden without any change to the system. Would you have any suggestions as to what I might look for that could cause such a message?

Answer: Sounds like the hard drive took a hit somehow. It shut down uncleanly or you are starting to get bad sectors. You should try to run fsck manually, like it says. Fsck is a Linux file checking utility installed with your operating system.

If you are unable to run fsck on the current machine, take the disk and mount it in another Linux machine and run fsck from there. Have patience though, it can take a while to complete a full scan.