What can I do with .chk files?

[Iconoclast]

Windows xp crashed. When it rebooted it ran a diskcheck and complained about
some files.

Now I find a new folder on my C: drive: FOUND.0000 it contains two files
0000.chk 4 kb and 0001.chk 675 kb

When I open them in notepad they show a lot of references to music files.
The other file shows a lot of gibberish.

Are these files fragments of files created by the "Crash"?

Is there anything I can do with these .chk files? My computer seems to be
running OK but a disaster may be lurking in the background.

 

[Cari MS-MVP]

Usually the best thing to do is delete them. I've never found anything
useful in a CHK file.. or anything I can retrieve.

Cari
www.coribright.com

 

[Grant]

Usually the best thing to do is delete them. I've never found anything
useful in a CHK file.. or anything I can retrieve.

Cari
www.coribright.com

Once in a while you'll find some text from a word document or something that you
were working on. It's sometimes worth opening them in notepad to see what they
contain. Or course, I've only have about 2 useful chk files out of the
thousands I've seen...anything other than plain text will be useless.

 

[Matt Coy]

Chkdsk and scandisk (from versions past) scan the file system for errors and
damaged portions on the drive are backed up to .chk files. Often the data
is moved successfully and the .chk files are useless. They should be safe
to delete... I've never had a problem after deleting them.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Windows xp crashed. When it rebooted it ran a diskcheck and
complained about some files.

Now I find a new folder on my C: drive: FOUND.0000 it contains two
files 0000.chk 4 kb and 0001.chk 675 kb

When I open them in notepad they show a lot of references to music
files. The other file shows a lot of gibberish.

Are these files fragments of files created by the "Crash"?

Yes.


Is there anything I can do with these .chk files?

In theory, if there is text within them, and that text has been
lost from its original file, you my be able to reconstruct some
or all of the data you've lost. If they are not text, they are
almost certainly useless. In practice, in the sixteen years I've
been using personal computers, I've never once found anything of
value there. On the other hand, I know people who claim they have
occasionally been able to use these files to reconstruct
something lost.

So I normally just delete the files, but it doesn't hurt for you
to examine them first with notepad.