Autocheck message on XP

[Mark M]

I try to boot XP WinPro offmy first hard drive. If my second hard
drive (which holds data) is installed in the PC then when I boot I
get this message:

"autochk program not found. Skipping autocheck."

After that the system reboots. And I go round in a loop.

I think I need to run a checkdisk on the data drive before XP
loads. Are there some recovery utilities on the XP Pro cd which
will do this? Or are there some third party ones I should use
instead?

I seem to recall that there is an upper limit on what size FAT32
partitions can be handled by XP.

My data drive has two FAT32 partitions of 36 Gb and 74 GB. The XP
partition is NTFS and only 9 GB.

Strangely, if I clear the XP signature in the MBR of the second
hard drive then XP will boot and will see the data partitions on
hard drive 2. But when I boot again I get the 'Autocheck' message.

 

[Guest]

Start/Run/type MSCONFIG and click Ente
Click the startup tab and look for "autochk
and uncheck it, click Apply and OK - reboot

 

[Rod Speed]

I try to boot XP WinPro offmy first hard drive. If
my second hard drive (which holds data) is installed
in the PC then when I boot I get this message:

"autochk program not found. Skipping autocheck."

After that the system reboots. And I go round in a loop.

Sounds like you managed to stuff up your XP
config by cloning a drive and not doing that
properly on the first boot after the clone.

I think I need to run a checkdisk on the data drive before XP loads.

If you have been cloning, you need to fix the stuffed boot.ini etc.

Are there some recovery utilities on the XP Pro cd which will do this?

Yes, if you want to fix the stuffed boot config.

Or are there some third party ones I should use instead?
Nope.

I seem to recall that there is an upper limit on
what size FAT32 partitions can be handled by XP.

Nope, just what size it will create. Its happy to use
bigger ones that you have created outside XP.

My data drive has two FAT32 partitions of 36 Gb and 74 GB.

Those are fine.

The XP partition is NTFS and only 9 GB.

Strangely, if I clear the XP signature in the MBR of the second
hard drive then XP will boot and will see the data partitions on
hard drive 2. But when I boot again I get the 'Autocheck' message.

Likely you have a stuffed boot.ini thats the result of an attempt to clone.