Vista - Chkdsk?

Yesterday I started getting this message when the computer boots (and my husband says it jumped up in the middle of something he was doing, so he shut it down)

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3) deleting corrupt attribute record (128, "") from file record segment 92792

What does it mean, what is causing it, what do I need to do and how do I keep it from happening again?

Hello shokahoka,
Have you let it complete the scan ?, if not let it complete.
This could be caused by an unauthorised shutdown/hard reboot.(power cut/loss of power/or not letting it shutdown on it's own).
Hope this helps, good luck and post your results, thanks.
Also you could try to clean your registry, i have included a link.(backup your registry when prompted).

CCleaner - Home

I've let it finish every time, but we have been having a number of power outages of late; they say it's something they're doing over at the Marine Corp Air Station that's doing it.

Other than staying off my computer until they finish (if they finish) whatever they're doing is there a way to prevent this?

An Uninterruptible Power Supply can give you several minutes to shut your computer down normally if the power fails.

+1 for the UPS. Good call.

The harddrive faults are more liable to be caused by the power failures and a UPS can solve this.
Also as a precaution check you memory. Bad memory can also cause harddrive failures.

LOL, roy69,
Just thought of that after logging off, you beat me to it.

How do I check for "bad memory"? I'm trusting this isn't a bad joke about my hard drive having bad memories about being abandoned by its motherboard!

Click Start orb,type mem . Click on Memory Diagnostics Tool at top.

It came back no memory error, but when it restarrted I got the same message but it was deleting from segment 41822 this time.