Checkdisk at Startup

[Art Renkes]

About once per week or so, at startup I will get a message saying "One
of your disks needs to be checked for consistency" and the system will
proceed to run checkdisk. It has never found a problem, so I suspect
that this repeated diskchecking is mostly just a waste of time. Can
anyone offer any suggestions that might help me stop it? System is
W2K-SP4, 512 MB, 60 GB. TIA.
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[Dan Seur]

Art - a chkdsk at boot will sometimes occur because, at boot, the OS
detects the "dirty bit" on a drive, indicating that at the last shutdown
some operation or other on that drive was incomplete. Most often this
occurs because the last shutdown was a simple power off, not a graceful
system shutdown via the shutdown process (which makes sure all disk ops
are completed first). Is there a chance you or somebody else on the
system occasionally just hits the power off switch, instead of going
thru the normal shutdown process?

Another reason for chkdsk at boot is an attempt to run chkdsk /f during
a session on a drive that cannot be locked for exclusive use by chkdsk
because some unstoppable process is using the drive. In that case,
chkdsk asks whether you want to run chkdsk at the next boot, and if you
answer yes, it does. Are you the only user on this machine?

 

[Art Renkes]

Dan --- I should have mentioned that I'm the only user of this
machine, I always shut it down correctly, and I have never attempted
to run chkdsk during a session. But I thank you anyway for trying to
help -- and any other suggestions would be welcome too.
Art

Art - a chkdsk at boot will sometimes occur because, at boot, the OS
detects the "dirty bit" on a drive, indicating that at the last shutdown
some operation or other on that drive was incomplete. Most often this
occurs because the last shutdown was a simple power off, not a graceful
system shutdown via the shutdown process (which makes sure all disk ops
are completed first). Is there a chance you or somebody else on the
system occasionally just hits the power off switch, instead of going
thru the normal shutdown process?

Another reason for chkdsk at boot is an attempt to run chkdsk /f during
a session on a drive that cannot be locked for exclusive use by chkdsk
because some unstoppable process is using the drive. In that case,
chkdsk asks whether you want to run chkdsk at the next boot, and if you
answer yes, it does. Are you the only user on this machine?

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[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

Art,

I would check your System Event Log to see if there are any messages about
the file system detecting possible corruption on this drive. If the file
system detects possible corruption, it will schedule CHKSDK to run on next
reboot and you may not be aware of it.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

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[Art Renkes]

Greg -- Thanks for your suggestion. However, it turns out that every
time checkdisk has run at startup the following (identical) entry is
made in Event Viewer:

Type: Information
Date & Time: (as appropriate)
Source: Winlogon
Category: None
Event ID: 1001
Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is FAT32
One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. . .
Windows will now check the disk.
Volume Serial Number is 3F8E-A90B
Windows has checked the file system and found no problem.

Any more ideas or suggestions??

Art,

I would check your System Event Log to see if there are any messages about
the file system detecting possible corruption on this drive. If the file
system detects possible corruption, it will schedule CHKSDK to run on next
reboot and you may not be aware of it.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

Want to email me? Delete ntloader.

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[Art Renkes]

This must be a tougher question than I had thought -- so let me try a
variation of it. If no one knows how I might prevent checkdisk from
sometimes running at startup -- does anyone know how to "cancel" it
after it has started to run? The message, while advising against it,
does say I can cancel it -- it just doesn't say how. TIA

About once per week or so, at startup I will get a message saying "One
of your disks needs to be checked for consistency" and the system will
proceed to run checkdisk. It has never found a problem, so I suspect
that this repeated diskchecking is mostly just a waste of time. Can
anyone offer any suggestions that might help me stop it? System is
W2K-SP4, 512 MB, 60 GB. TIA.
Replace deadspam with yahoo to reply.

Replace deadspam with yahoo to reply.

 

[Bob I]

Humm, mine says "Press any key to cancel". But you have to do it before
the timer clocks down to zero.

 

[Art Renkes]

Bob,
Thanks for the info. I had tried hitting some keys with no luck --
but maybe I didn't do it soon enough -- (checkdisk was still running,
but I'm not sure what timer you're referring to.) Anyway. the next
time it runs at startup I'll try it again. Thanks.
Art

Humm, mine says "Press any key to cancel". But you have to do it before
the timer clocks down to zero.

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[Bob I]

A "scheduled" chkdsk at boottime has a 10 second countdown during which
time you can cancel out of after that you're along for the ride till
it's done.