Comments on: How to Use Check Disk in Windows Vista

By: JANE RHODES

JANE RHODES — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:22:15 +0000

LAPTOP WILL NOT STAY ON GET GRAY SCREEN HELP

By: Rachel

Rachel — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:59:08 +0000

I have the same problem. I waited for 2 days and it wouldn’t go beyond 98%. Finally I just powered down the whole thing and started again, with it getting stuck at the same place. I hope that my turning it off before finishing wasn’t a fatal error. Is it worth trying again, even if it might get stuck there? I would really like to get some things on my disk checked and repaired.

By: Rocky

Rocky — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:03:21 +0000

You can expect this to take a good 24 hours depending on the options you’ve set for chkdsk. Best thing to do is to let chkdsk run through it’s process until it’s complete. Even better to run chkdsk at startup, before Windows loads, as it will complete faster this way. Some external drives won’t be detected in time after rebooting your computer and the scheduled disk check run won’t kick off – in that case, boot from your install CD and run the command prompt from there instead. Good luck.

By: pharlap

pharlap — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:30:18 +0000

Help I have the same problem, hangs up in stage 5 at 7835451 no matter how many times I try….
Can anyone help me? Please…

By: Brent Trahan

Brent Trahan — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 12:54:41 +0000

Go to; Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer and click on the Application Log. Scroll down to the time of the disc scan and look for an entry similar to: Information xxTime xxDate Winlogon xxx xxx N/A. Double click on it and scroll in the report.

By: Ralph G

Ralph G — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 04:08:54 +0000

Does chkdsk creat a report of the check results? Where is the report and how do I get it?

By: vipul

vipul — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:49:36 +0000

Hello,

i had run scan disk on my external hard drive but after some hours my laptop automatically shut down and after some hours i again started my laptop…….now my laptop is not detecting that external hard drive or hard drive is not being shown in my computers

please………please………..help…………….its very very urgetn issue……………i read ur feedbacks and its really helpful thats why i am asking you for help………

By: Brent Trahan

Brent Trahan — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:22:25 +0000

You need to run the command prompt with admin privileges. Look at step 1 under the Using the Command Line Interface section.

By: Maria

Maria — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 01:36:10 +0000

I have Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 32 bit operating system with Vista Home Premium and I tried to do the DOS prompt disk check and I get:

Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode.

What does that mean and how do I do it?

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:48:10 +0000

Michael,

Don’t choose repair. Just watch the first screens during the boot process. It should announce it is going to do as seen here:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/173198-disk-check-press-any-key-timeout-value-startup.html

Mike

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:45:15 +0000

Hi Charles,

Putting the drive in another machine was a bad move but your data will still be there. It would never boot in the 2nd machine unless you’re really lucky. The problem is it may have changed something that will stop it booting in the original PC.

I suggest you put everything back as it was, then press F8 during the black screen phase when you first power on. Then either choose System Restore, or Startup repair.

I don’t know why it didn’t boot after scandisk in the first place. Startup repair is the FIRST one to try. Both these options will NOT lose any data – they will just repair windows boot files if they need it.

If neither works don’t panic. You have a second PC. If it has a working copy of Windows (Vista) you can just put the disk in as a second drive. Once booted the drive will just appear as another drive letter automatically.

If it doesn’t still don’t panic. Just talk to a professional and they will easily fix it.

Of course the disk *may* have died but I doubt it.

Good luck

Mike
PS: I do this stuff for a living so am more than qualified.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:15:23 +0000

I am running windows vista 32-bit. I try to do disk check and I tells me that i need to schedule it for the next restart. so I schedule it. I restart the computer and it goes directly to my desktop. I tried running disk check through the cmd. and again it tells me to schedule it for the next restart. I schedule it and restart my computer. I goes directly to my desktop. I tried restarting my computer and pressing F8 and select repair computer. again it goes directly to my computer. Does anyone have any suggestions? thanks

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:45:29 +0000

I had use scandisk under windows vista… My computer restart to do the scan… everything works great!

I try to boot my OS after.. and nothing, windows don’t want to boot

I take my HD and I put it in another computer… But, not able to work on.

Someone can help me. Please : I lost many files. I need to repair it.

By: davitof

davitof — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:20:43 +0000

Cycles are when folder A contains folder B which again contains folder A. I mean that B actually contains A again, not that it contains a folder which happens to be named “A”. When this happens, you can endlessly open A, then B, then A, then B, then A, then… and opening the full tree structure will probably hang the Explorer. This of course should never happen, but it is possible. I never saw this happen on a NTFS drive, but I saw it in FAT, which does not mean it is impossible in NTFS. Some disk repair or file recovery tools could do this kind of mistake. I guess that in this case chkdsk removes the reference to folder A in folder B.

By: wmholt

wmholt — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:25:51 +0000

William – you can capture the results by setting up a batch file which consists of only these lines of text:

chkdsk.exe d: /f
pause

I’m using Drive D: as an example.

Save your file as something like, “Checkdisk_D.bat”, and when you run it, the window will stay open after the results are displayed, allowing you to go to the menu in the command window and choose, “Edit -> Mark”, which allows you to highlight the text, and then “Edit -> Copy” after the text is marked. You can then copy the results into a regular text file.

The command window’s menu is accessible by clicking on the little black icon in the top left corner with the picture showing “C:\”.

By: Ann Printer

Ann Printer — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:30:14 +0000

Good stuff.

I saw something like this in SE Michigan recently on machine in for repair.

By: John

John — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:26:54 +0000

Greg says:
June 18, 2009 at 12:42 amAs stated previously (and not really answered) — a second restart does NOT invoke Chkdsk.

“When I schedule the chkdsk at next boot, it still indicates the file system is NTFS and the disk is locked and it can’t perform the check.”

Soooooo, I repeat and ask again —- Now what?

If your getting this in command prompt you will need to say Yes (or Y) to the option of unmounting your harddrive on next restart….

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:42:49 +0000

As stated previously (and not really answered) — a second restart does NOT invoke Chkdsk.

“When I schedule the chkdsk at next boot, it still indicates the file system is NTFS and the disk is locked and it can’t perform the check.”

Soooooo, I repeat and ask again —- Now what?

By: SirMartin

SirMartin — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:03:07 +0000

Hope it works. but thanks anyway :)

By: William Giesselmann

William Giesselmann — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:17:18 +0000

When the disk check got finished, the data results flashed so fast I never could read them. Does Windows Vista store these results anywher so I can read them and print the results out? Thanks.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 04:52:58 +0000

When i start up my computer again it doesn’t perform the disk check?!

Information:
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium
Bit: 32bit OS
Laptop Brand: Lenovo
Processor: Intel Celeron 1.73ghz

By: Ritinuech

Ritinuech — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 16:02:11 +0000

I think the HD I’m working on for a friend is shot. Has real problem booting. Gets to desktop about every 3rd try. HP Advisor says bad block in boot sector is the issue. I decided to run chkdsk /f on it. Been running for over 24 hours and still stuck at exactly 20% completion of stage 4 of 5. HD light alternates between short blips and longer blips coming in series. How long should I allow this to continue with reasonable hope of soloution? I read that chkdsk should not be halted. However what more harm than irreparable can there be? Will CNTRL C halt the program? Just power down? How long is long enough to assume defeat?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I know a little about PC’s but I’ll never know enough.

By: chris

chris — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 01:07:25 +0000

I’m not even sure that check disc is what i need to do but i tried it and after i restarted it didn’t come up and now the command prompt isnt even comming up.

By: Gerard Espinas

Gerard Espinas — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:25:28 +0000

Very Useful Article. Thanks a lot.

By: Maria Rouse

Maria Rouse — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:37:28 +0000

thanks so much;went to run ckdsk but said I didn’t have authority to run it. Your instructions helped with everythign. I have now run chkdisk on the two drives I needed repaired and looked at

thanks so much
Maria
MO

By: jeezaa

jeezaa — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:49:39 +0000

“Never choose to dismount the drive. That option should only be used by a professional.”

The best thing on Unix based OS is, that you don’t need HDD – you can run only on RAM memory.

By: Yoru

Yoru — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:52:20 +0000

How long could it conceivably take for check disk to run on vista home premium with a 720g raid 5 array? It goes through all the check and repair stages ok but seems to hang at the free space stage 5 of 5. I can’t cancel it as the keyboard is deactivated during for some reason even though it works for in the bios screen before check disk starts.

By: Brent Trahan

Brent Trahan — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:23:01 +0000

What it’s telling you is the disk is locked because it’s in use and the next time Windows boots up the disk will be checked before Windows is loaded.

By: Tim Nicholson

Tim Nicholson — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:11:10 +0000

When I schedule the chkdsk at next boot, it still indicates the file system is NTFS and the disk is locked and it can’t perform the check. I thought the chkdsk was suppose to run before Windows started up. I suppose it must be using *some* files on the disk at that point. But wouldn’t pretty much everyone with a factory-shipped configuration of 1 large hard disk partition have this issue? So how are others able to successfully fix their hard disks?

Is there the equivalent to a DOS Boot Disk for Windows Vista? Some files that can be burnt to a CD (or in my case thrown on an external hard drive) and you boot to a command prompt from there and run the chkdsk command?

By: Brent Trahan

Brent Trahan — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:34:38 +0000

Check out this guide: http://www.maximumpcguides.com/stop-a-scheduled-disk-check/