Windlight Corrupt?

So this is the first major issue I have had with SecondLife since I started playing sometime last year. I just downloaded 1.19.1 (4) and played for a few hours yesterday with no problems. But when I started today it logged me in and crashed, then a message came up saying...

NetscapeDispatchWnd: SecondLife.exe - Corrupt File

The file or directory
C:\PROGRA~1\SecondLife\app_settings\windlight\skies is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility.


Now, I tried a few more times with no success. So I ran "Chkdsk" and tried again, no luck. I uninstalled it, but it would not remove the Windlight folder since it was corrupted. I tried deleting it multiple times but it would not let me because it was "not empty", even though it clearly was. During reinstallation, the same message came up and then I was asked if I would like to Abort, Retry, or Ignore what it was installing (it was Windlight). So after clicking Retry with no success, I tried Ignore (there were multiple things to Ignore). After running SecondLife again, the corrupted file message came up yet again, but I was still able to play. But everything came up in complete darkness. I could not see the playing world. I have since uninstalled it (except for the Windlight folder which will not go away) and I am completely stumped.

The only thing that has worked was reinstalling SecondLife to a different directory and I have since had no problems (except that my speakers crackle now for some reason). I just would like to find out what has happened to my previous installation, how to remove it competely, and how to prevent something like this from happening again, thanks!


Specs:
Windows XP Professional SP2
2GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT 256MB
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz

Did you run the command line version of chkdsk? Or by right-click on the drive letter, Properties, etc?

For the command line (Start / Run / enter: cmd or pick Command Prompt from Accessories) it should be: chkdsk c: /f /r

/f will fix problems as they are found
/r will scan the entire disk for bad sectors (can take a - very - long while)

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The easiest solution would be to simply install SL into a different folder, or name it differently (just adding a 2 at the end of the path when it asks you to pick one would do it).

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The best solution would be to run a full disk scan though... and if any bad sectors are reported, that's not the end of the world (although the files there will be corrupt) since they assign spares, but it can also be an early warning sign that your hard disk is going to ascend to hard disk heaven sometime soon.

Not that you shouldn't always back-up, but if it finds bad sectors (as opposed to just a file system problem) and you don't have a back-up of all the files you don't want to loose, do take the time to do it very soon. If it doesn't fail, you lost a few minutes, if it does fail, you'll be very happy you took the time .

(On second thought: if you don't have a back-up of files you want to keep, do that first of all. An exhaustive scan won't do anything bad to a normal hard disk, but it might be too intensive for one that's already nearing full failure)