How to use CHKDSK (Check Disk) - Discussion

Please leave any feedback about the How to use CHKDSK (Check Disk) article in this thread.

I'm using 7 RC1, and I'm more than aware of the major bug in chkdsk being used on a non boot drive, but is there a way to run disk check on a slave drive without that pesky memory leak? I mean, yes I could set up another box to run windows xp, get everything installed, etc. to run it and then swap the hdd out for a bit, but I'd like to save myself the hassle. Does anyone know of a way to bypass the bug? Or a way to make a utility disk that could fix ntfs sectors on boot? Any ideas would be awesome.

Can you just run the Windows error checking tool under drive properties instead? That can fix bad sectors and should work ok as it's a non-boot drive (you might need for force unmount it first though)?

Thanks for the reply, however regardless of whether you run it through cmd, or if you run it under drive properties, the memory leak still occurs. Sometime if you have the chance, try it out and watch your system performance under task manager. Memory usage slowly increases and increases until finally you max out, and explorer crashes, or you get a bsod or similar. I read that the bug carried over into the RTM too, which means the final version of 7 has it lol. I'm sure it will get patched in the final version soon after it hits the shelves.
Anyway, I guess I'm wondering also if you know of any other simple way I could go about performing a chkdsk -r without the use of windows 7? Or if there's some bypass to the bug I don't know about that would be cool to know as well =) Long story short, I just want to know a quick and easy method of performing a chkdsk in another environment, without necessarily installing a whole extra OS to do so/swap hard drives out.
Thanks for any information!

The chkdsk "issue" is actually not a memory leak or a bug. It's a design decision that uses memory space to accelerate the chkdsk process, as the Win7 devs assumed people performing the procedure would be in a hurry to get it over with.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1235

You can read more at that link.

You could stick a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD on a USB stick, then boot from that and run one of the drive repair utilities:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Thank you Ian, quite helpful! I think that may be the best way to go about this. And as far as it being a bug, yes I would definitely consider it one. They may not call it that, but it definitely is. Yes, its intentions were good, use the resources you have to get the job done faster, but if you physically can't perform the task because all memory gets used and explorer crashes, then I guess the whole purpose is defeated. Thank you very much guys

Hey all,
Just spent the past hour getting my new Win 7 Premium OS to boot after attempting to perform a disc check and repair. I set it up the old fashioned scheduling it thru the My Computer and tools way mentioned in the beginning of this post. When I rebooted my Notebook PC I got the normal count-down from 10 to 1 but then the system hung on 1 and the Disc Check never ran. I tried this several times even hitting different keys in an attempt to stop the scan. I tried unsuccessfully to repair my OS from the original MS Win 7 CD. I finally hit the f8 key and selected start from last know good boot or configuration. I have owned PC's for years from Win 95 all the way to the newest Win 7 and this is the very first time I have had such a major problem when trying to use Disc Check or Disc Repair. Also after my system finally did boot up I tried to use the CMD prompt but I received this error message: "Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to evoke this utility in elevated mode." I am running a Core 2 Duo Alienware Notebook 64 bit VISTA OS recently upgraded to the Win 7 OS. 3 GB DDR3 RAM. Any ideas or suggestions of how to run the CHKDSK in Command Prompt and/or has anyone else had problems with Win 7 not booting after trying to run a "scheduled" CHKDSK thru the tools tab of My Computer?? I do not think that I have any Disc errors I was just trying to be proactive, kind of like running Disc clean-up and defragmenter.

The flag needs to be reset and you need to run cmd.exe as admin.

Right click on the command prompt shortcut and choose run as admin.

Then,

chkdsk /r C:

hit enter.

Change C to the partition letter in question.

Is the "FLAG" the Win 7 Action Center?
I have no errors listed their or anywhere at this time. I was simply attempting to be proactive by running CHKDSK like you might run Disc De frag or a virus scan.

I ran CMD as Admin but the CHKDSK process still did not run.
I received the following error message:

"The type of the file system is NTFS."
"Cannot unlock current drive."

"Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process."
"Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts?" (Y/N)."

I did NOT select YES since this process running at Win start-up does not seem to function.

Does this error message mean some program is open like Norton, STEAM, Windows Messenger or something else running in the background??

I tried closing any open processes that I understood and made sure nothing was actually running but still got the same error.

Thanks for helping a noob who thinks he knows something about PC's...LOL!!