Re: CHKDSK repeatedly runs.
- From: "Twayne" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:46:38 -0400
Yesterday I ran to check for errors. "SpyBot S&D" asked me if I want
to allow this registry change to happen when I next booted up. I
said yes, but now EVERY time I boot up CHKDSK runs and takes almost
45 minutes to complete.
How do I change the registry so this doesn't keep happening?
THANKS, Gene
How do I keep CHKDSK from running on every start up?
Home » Hardware » Disks and Mass Storage
Summary: There are times when the disk checking utility needs to
run before you boot into Windows. Sometimes it seems to get stuck and
does so every time.
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I have a two year old laptop running Windows XP. I had run
"Defrag" and also clicked on the check drive for errors option, which
was then scheduled at next restart.
Now this scan program runs every time I start up. How can I
shut this off?
Good news: we can turn it off.
Bad news: it means editing the registry.
The "I'm not so sure" news: you shouldn't have to. It should have
turned itself off, and I'm concerned that this might be trying to tell
you something.
.
Checking your disk for errors requires that the checking utility
have exclusive access to the hard disk. That means that even Windows
can't be accessing the drive for any reason. If the disk drive you're
checking is the drive on which Windows lives, the error check is then
"scheduled" to happen automatically the next time you boot, before
Windows loads. It looks much like this while it's running:
"It's possible that there's an issue preventing the scanner from
un-scheduling itself."
It should happen once. When the utility completes successfully, it
should remove that request to run again on boot up, and then reboot. In
other words, the next time you boot, which would be upon completion of
the scan, it shouldn't check again.
Before I tell you how to turn it off, I want you to watch it one
more time, this time paying particular attention to any error messages
that it may produce before it completes. (A digital camera snapshot of
the screen, as I've done above, is a great way to preserve the error
massages before they disappear as the boot continues.) It's possible
that there's an issue preventing the scanner from un-scheduling itself.
.
In order to disable the scan we'll be making changes in the
Windows registry. Step one should be: back it up. This Microsoft Support
article Description of the Microsoft Windows registry includes pointers
to the recommended ways of doing so.
The short version, for those who are ready to dive into the
registry: we're going to change the value of
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\BootExecute to autocheck autochk *.
Step by step that means:
· Start the registry editor by
clicking Start, then Run, typing in regedit and pressing OK. The result
will be similar to this:
· Click on the boxed plus sign [+]
in front of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. That will expand and look something like
this:
Don't worry if your instance of Regedit already had some of these
expanded; it remembers the last setting. Just follow along as if it
hadn't been, expanding the nodes that we need if they're not already
expanded.
· Expand (by clicking the boxed
plus sign in front of) SYSTEM
· Expand CurrentControlSet
· Expand Control
· Now click on Session Manager,
which is listed underneath Control and you should see something like
this:
· In the right-hand pane, double
click on BootExecute. This contains the instruction that we want to
remove. You should get an edit dialog much like this:
The command "autocheck autochk /p \??\C:" is what we want to
change.
· Change replace the "/p \??\C:"
with an asterisk (*). The resulting command, "autocheck autochk *" in
the dialog looks like this:
· Press OK to dismiss the edit
dialog.
· Close Registry Editor
Now, on your next boot the disk checker should not run.
I say "should" because there are still things that may cause it to
run anyway:
You didn't shut down your machine cleanly. Perhaps your machine
crashed or suddenly rebooted. Or perhaps you were in a hurry and turned
off the power before Windows said it was safe to do so. In both cases
Windows may not have finished updating information on the hard disk on
shutdown, so it must check the disk on start up to make sure that
everything is ok.
The disk may be failing. It's sometimes the case that a disk
drive, as it starts to fail, will do so in a way that causes Windows to
notice and run the disk checking utility on start up. It's not common,
but it can happen.
Related:
a.. Ask Leo! - How do I fix a cyclic redundancy check error when
I try to copy a file?
b.. Ask Leo! - How do I fix a bad sector on my hard drive?
c.. Ask Leo! - Your hard disk is more likely to fail than you
think.
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Article 11367 | Posted April 9, 2007
.
Recent Comments
I have never had to do this in XP but there is an old 98 trick you
might try. Start up in windows safe mode and let the scan disk run. If
something flaky is running after the system boots that is causing
windows not to change the "autocheck" entry it should not run.
Posted by: Dan Ullman at April 10, 2007 09:09 AM
Leo, don't you think there's something called "setting the Dirty
Bit" in Windows XP that does the work of rechecking it everytime.
http://www.uninets.net/~blaisdel/whistler12.htm#DirtyBit
See the above link.
Ravi.
Posted by: Ravi Agrawal at April 14, 2007 07:35 AM
I have similar problem, and i know the cause. One of my hdds is
hooked through bad ide cable (actually it sits in low-quality removable
hdd rack). And now my XP keeps checking that hdd on every reboot (and
doesn't find any errors).
Interesting fact: before there was other hdd connected to that
cable and then no long check was performed on boot. System just
occasionally then wrote error messages in system log saying "controller
error/parity error" (something like that).
Possible cause in my case is that newer hdd supports higher Ultra
DMA mode (5?) than my old hdd supported (2?).
My XP's
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager BootExecute
contains autocheck autochk * (XP default).
I'm still annoyed and don't know a solution.
Posted by: Alv at April 27, 2007 06:47 AM
Thanks Dan Ullman. It also works on XP.
Posted by: Morten at May 29, 2007 10:32 AM
This link might help out:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cfm?action=showthread&threadid=231103&forumid=
.
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