Computer Stuff

Detecting and repairing disk errors

You can use the Error-checking tool to check for file system errors and bad sectors on your hard disk.

1. Open My Computer, and then select the local disk you want to check.
2. On the File menu, click Properties.
3. On the Tools tab, under Error-checking, click Check Now.
4. Under Check disk options, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors & Automatically fix file system errors check boxes.

 Notes

• To open My Computer, click Start, and then click My Computer.
• All files must be closed for this process to run. If the volume is currently in use, a message box will appear prompting you to indicate whether or not you want to reschedule the disk checking for the next time you restart your system. Then, the next time you restart your system, disk checking will run. Your volume will not be available to perform other tasks while this process is running.
• If your volume is formatted as NTFS, Windows automatically logs all file transactions, replaces bad clusters, and stores copies of key information for all files on the NTFS volume.
• For more information, click Related Topics.

In XP the main drive disk check results are under winlogon in the Application area in the Event log

The Vista check disk log can be found as follows: Go to Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer, Windows Logs, Application. Scroll down the Application Events looking for Wininit in the Source Column. You can also use Find in the right column to help locate each Wininit entry. Open Wininit and there it is.
An added (ie secondary or external) drive will post the results on the screen in a popup.

To disable automatic disk checking at Windows startup

(I got this info from this page)

Method 1: Using CHKNTFS utility

CHKNTFS is a utility that has been developed by Microsoft to disable disk checking on certain drives at Windows startup. To use this utility go to Start –> Run –> cmd.

If you want to disable check disk on C: drive, use the following command on command prompt.

chkntfs /X C:

If you want to disable check disk on two or more drives, just keep on adding the drives:

chkntfs /X C: D: E:

This will disable check disk on C, D and E drives.

If you want to restore what you have done, that is, enable automatic disk checking on all the drives again, just run the following command:

chkntfs /D

This will restore all the drives to automatic disk checkup.

Method 2: Using Registry

To disable automatic disk checking at Windows startup through registry, go to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

In the right hand pane, double click BootExecute.

The default value of the key is autocheck autochk *

* means every drive is checked for consistency. Just add /K:C at the end before *. /K switch will disable autocheck on C: drive at Windows startup. So the final value should look like this:

autocheck autochk /k:C *

If you want to add more drives, the key should look like this: (disabling C and D drives)

autocheck autochk /k:C /k:D *

If you want to restore everything to default, just replace the key with the default one i.e.,

autocheck autochk *

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