Home > Computer > Disable or Stop Auto CHKDSK During Windows Startup

Disable or Stop Auto CHKDSK During Windows Startup

Posted By Raymond In Category: Computer

Feb
23
2008
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One of Windows annoying so called “feature” is CHKDSK being automatically being run whenever you don’t shut down your computer properly. You get the blue colored screen that says “Checking file system on C: The type of the file system is NTFS. One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended that you continue. To skip disk checking, press any key within 10 seconds(s).

Disable CHKDSK at startup

Simply pressing any key would stop CHKDSK from running but when you restart your computer, you’ll get this prompt again. Sometimes even after letting CHKDSK scan the drive that it wants to, CHKDSK would still automatically run at next boot! Here’s how to disable or stop CHKDSK at Windows bootup.


There are some people suggested to edit the registry but the proper way to disable CHKDSK from starting up is using the /x switch on chkntfs command in command prompt. The /x switch will exclude a drive from the default boot-time check. If you have drive C: as your hard drive, then the command to disable chkdsk from scanning C: drive would be:

chkntfs /x c:

If you have 2 drive, C and D, you can disable chkdsk with the command below

chkntfs /x c: d:

The chkntfs utility works by modifying the BootExcecute value in the system registry. The BootExecute value is located in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\Session Manager

The default value is for BootExecute is autocheck autochk *. When you use the /x switch, it will add a /k parameter prior to the asterisk. The /k parameter excludes volumes from being checked for the presence of a dirty bit.

For example, I run the command chkntfs /x c: in command prompt. This command would modify this registry entry to autocheck autochk /k:c *
Remove chkdsk

There are some experts believe that it is better not to disable CHKDSK from scanning your hard drive. But as for me, I don’t want CHKDSK to scan my hard drive because if it finds anything bad, it will change the file to File00001.CHK. When that happens, I’ll have to use some third party tools to recognize and recover the CHK file.


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    • http://www.nelsonkuyela.wetpaint.com Nelson

      THANKS RAY,KEEP THE FRAME BURNING

    • bugtea

      thanks. that work
      send me more trik
      oke

    • little-hollow

      i have never got this error when i dont shutdown properly. but my mate gets it on has fat32 all the time

    • hidde

      lol i once stopped in the middle of the check. it made my windows stop working. i had to format my pc. lost all my school stuff

    • Cute Lemon Jokes

      Thanks.

      What I do currently is to press esc esc esc……ai….so annoying.

    • Mattwandcow

      I have a bootcamped(running on a mac) xp. My drivers don\’t kick in until AFTER the check, so I can\’t cancel it. Its trashed my firefox several times. It annoys me so friggin much…

    • irjan

      Usefull trick, thanks Ray.

    • Elvis

      God bless you Reymond, you help me a lot….

    • John C

      Adding my thanks to the many you already have. Invaluable help, much appreciated, thanks a lot,
      John C

    • Ryu

      Thanks Raymond! That solved my annoying problem.

    • Nishant

      thanx a lot… dont hav to press esc any more at start up.

    • http://chiefrunningwater.com/ Chief_runningwater

      OMFG this is what I have been looking for! For some random reason it started doing it and never has before and its annoying so i used this and it fixed it! thanks

    • Charlie

      John, I have searched throughout Microsoft trying to find out how to turn off this annoying pain in the a**, and they had no answer. Then my son said to GOOGLE it and I found your solution. Thank you, you are an answer to PRAYERS, many many PRAYERS.
      Thanks again, Charlie

    • Chris

      Windows did this to me once – it started \’autochecking\’ a FAT32 disk in a USB caddy I\’d left plugged in. It spent several minutes listing files it thought were corrupt (and I think \’converting\’ to CHK files) before complaining the disk was full. When it finally booted into Windows the disk was practically unreadable and subsequent attempts at recovering the disk content using recovery tools have prooven fruitless.

      Turn this \’feature\’ off at all costs. The usual crap you have to put up with when using Windows is tolerable but anything that actively destroys your data should be disabled.

    • Horace

      Thanks!

    • Jagdish

      it works fine, while booting system it showing disabled like…

      any way thanks

    • LizetM

      K, I really suck with computers.

      I tried putting the command on the command Prompt but it keeps telling me its: the type of the file system is NTFS. That’s all, I doesn’t do anything.

      Is there anyone who would like to help me with a step-by-step outline of what to do? Plz? :)

    • http://BigThanks!!! Eriek Haelnx

      Big Thanks!!!

    • kristijan

      thank you very much

    • red

      good

    • arvelle

      thank you for the detailed information, i was doubted for a minute why chkdsk run at startup, now i know the reason.

    • bashka

      oh, my god …

      10x, verry verry much!

    • http://es.geocities.com/alex_pap_92 Alex Molina

      Si este manual lo tradujeras correctamente al español, sin usar traductores online, estaría mucho mejor. ;-)

    • http://es.geocities.com/alex_pap_92 Alex Molina

      This web translates automatically itself into the user\’s language??? XD

    • me

      What of the white line that briefly appears during bootup. What is that doing is it checking also. What is the application and registry that calls this. Is it autochk, that also dskchk.

      Dskchk is bad for any hard drive as it doesn\’t know how to fix errors just make errors worse or stop you using the hd on that pc.

    • apa

      After a hard disk crash, I got it replaced. Now that disk has been partitioned in C: (WIN XP)[NTFS] , D:, E: [both FAT32]. Now the problem is everytime I boot the system the the blue screen appears, checking file system on D: [FAT32] and it doesn’t go off. I have also notices that i flashes another blue screen for 1 sec, too fast for me to read and then it reboots itself. What seems to be then issue ? How to turn off the chkdsk.

    • Rex Aguillon

      Thanks a lot bro, this kind of easy than the others… keep it up….

    • salma

      thank you but my problem didnot solve! my hard had problem i right-clicked on drive c and ordered error checking. windows gave this error: The disk check could not be performed because the disk check utility needs exclusive access to some Windows files on the disk. These files can be accessed by restarting Windows. Do you want to schedule the disk check to occur the next time you restart the computer?
      i said yes! because of mentioned problem i should shutdown my laptop by keeping power buttom for seconds! i did! the next time i turned on my laptop it automatically started to check without giving opportunity not performing it! it did it and stuck in 18 %! i waited 1-2hours, no response! i shut down few times and again stuck in 18% without giving chance to exit! now i am frustrated! what should i do?!please email me the answer if possible. thanks.

    • http://vrushank.livejournal.com Vrushank

      How do you enable the defaults back? Its not allowing me to defragment my hard disk… gives me this error :

      http://i37.tinypic.com/20sg395.jpg

    • les

      hay hijueputa yo no entiendo esa mierda alguien me puede explicar esta maricada

    • les

      there is hijueputa I don’t understand that mierda somebody he/she can explain to me this maricada

    • Christian

      Si no entiendes, entonces aprende a leer inglés, y como sea, trata de que no se noten los enormes agujeros en tus pantalones.
      It\’s a pity some people cannot avoid to get it dirty, no matter wherever they go…

    • http://None baohp

      Thanks a lot …!

    • scorpion

      A mi nada de eso me funciono, lo solucione renombrando el archivo autochk.exe que se encuentra en c:\windows\system32

      esto lo dejo por si a alguine mas le sucede lo mismo

      salu2

    • http://spunker88 spunker88

      Tried this on my old pc with windows 2000, b/c this screen kept coming up and it was annoying me.

      Thanks, this worked good even on my fat32 drive.

    • http://carlo carlo

      when i go to cmd promt my pc will automatic shutdown what will i do with it bro? plz. repply

    • http://pleasehelpme............. ravi

      hi ..

      when i started my pc i found blue screen for chkdsk scan .i complet it many times but it still come so plese help me to stop it and i not found registry entry in my com… so please help me.

    • http://www.victorsgomez.com Victor S. Gomez

      Obrigado
      Seu artigo me ajudou bastante. Bom Natal

    • ignacio

      porfavor ayudame

      mi problema esque el inicir emiesa a chekear el disco (:D)
      y siempre lo hace, no entiendo porque ademas el disco local es el (:C)
      buenoo enrealidad esta particionado en 3 discos C, D y E

      lo raro es que de un dia al otro empezo el PC a activar el chdsk cada ves ke iniciaba el computador y a chequear un disco que nisiquiera es el local, y porfavor ayudame a solucionar esto porque no quiero evitar que lo chekeee porque me ayuda a recuperar archivos huerfanos y eso kuando se apaga mal el computador, me gustaria saber la forma que evitara checkear solo ese disco , pero el problema es que cuando pongo /k :D * en el regedit
      luego empiesa a chekear el disco E y el prblema nose soluciona

      xD porfavor ayudenme

    • http://Hello loopy

      Does somebody know how to enable CHKDSK ?

      I have tried a lot of solutions (long scan of the HD, overwrite CHKDSK.EXE in WINDOWS/System32/) nothing works …

      Perhaps, as said ‘me’ —} Post 25 this is better no repairing it ?

      “Dskchk is bad for any hard drive as it doesn\’t know how to fix errors just make errors worse or stop you using the hd on that pc.”

    • josh

      I tried the chkntfs/x c: and it said that the type of file is ntfs. well i think that I know that since I entered it. so i am trying to find it under the registery editor and can\\\\\\\’t find session manager anywhere even with safe mode and using a search of /c:
      I am having to bypass the normal mode of windows and run in safe. The chkdsk used to let me hit a key to bypass but it goes straight to scanning now. If anyone has a solution I would pay you at this point. Email solutions to xpolde22@verizon.net I think I am at the last point before buying a new cpu. thank you alot for trying to have an answer. josh

    • Naqqash

      Thnx For that it really works.

    • Krishnan

      Thanks to u very much Its working fine

    • loopy

      A site explaining how to repair a CHKDSK wich never stop running and a CHKDSK always desabled

      http://fspsa.free.fr/chkdsk-5phases.htm#autochk-systematique

      Concerning my problem : a CHKDSK was impossible to perform : the reason of this was the keyboard.

      Just removing the keyboard repaired scandisk.

      Possible to made a scandisk with the mouse (and, thus, without the keyboard)

      A key was bad (the one of the sound) : bread inside or dust . The simple fact to remove the keyboard acted as a defibrillator ( with the move of the keyboard, the key -or the cordon ? – \”rusted off) .

      The (same) keyboard works back.

      Does it work for you ?

    • Jim

      Thanks for the help on chkdsk options. Very well done and easy for the less computer savvy individuals to undrstand.

    • kosta

      What if chkdsk get’s stuck due to some bad HD sectors?
      I can’t boot Windows in any mode (safe or not) as it gets stuck checking my drive.
      There must be some way to cancel the chkdsk manually so I can boot up.

    • ROb

      Thanks for the info!!!

    • Jack c

      My problem is there is NO option to press a key and stop it. It runs automatically. I tried just pushing keys as soon as I restarted but nothing. It completes step 1 and then freezes on Step 2 Checking Indexes It stops around 13% there. Then there is nothing I can do except turn it off. I can’t doing anything except have CHKDSK run and freeze. Tried just restoring with a disk,etc, but it won’t let me access anything other than the CHKDSK.

      Any thoughts?

    • ajithkumar.r

      very very thanks

    • http://www.nthelp.com/40/chkdsks.htm Nitin

      Stop CHKDSK from running at boot time.

      1.Edit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager
      2.Change the BootExecute entry from:

      autocheck autochk * /………
      To:
      autocheck autochk *

      If you have scheduled CHKDSK for multiple volumes, there will be an autocheck entry for each volume. Delete the string from the BootExecute registry value for each volume you do not want checked.

      If you have NT 4.0, SP2, a new command line utility,CHKNTFS, will assist in preventing repeated CHKDSKs during reboots if the “dirty” bit is set.

      Type CHKNTFS /? and see KB article Q160416.

      thnx
      Nitin
      +91 9725836575
      07923266721

    • Shivam

      Thanks for the solution!

    • N00b

      If computer wont load as happened to me.
      When I installed Kaspersky anti virus from command prompt bypassing product check.
      Stopping it removing spybot, because Spybot has a code conflict with Kaspersky.
      It would say error unmountable boot device and get blue screen when booting up.
      I just put in XP PRO DVD and ran Chkdsk.
      And it fixed it.
      So if there is a serious problem, auto chkdsk ain’t gonna help anyway.
      Use ChkDsk and Boot repair from XP PRO DVD is better.

    • jp

      great!!! everyone else reiterates the microsoft description of the value needing to be set to “autocheck autoch*”, which is the DEFAULT.. even M$ says this is how to turn it off!!!!tempts)

      your pointer WORKS!!!! THANK YOU !!

      (after 2 hours of redundant searches & attempts)

    • Jag

      Thank you so much worked great

    • Barbara Stebbins

      Thanks so much – this was the trick!

    • woross

      THX so much!

    • Juan

      About 5 days ago I set chkdsk on restart, and it stopped at 65% (no HD activity), and kept doing that since. Like Jack c, I didn’t have the option to stop it, it went right to the scan. After trying every suggestion I found on the net, I began just trying stuff out at random, so I went into “debugging mode”, as the regular safe modes also performed the scan automatically, and lo and behold, “debugging mode” let me stop it before it began. Once in Windows I canceled the check just like Raymond explained.
      Hope it helps.

    • Alternal

      Your posting just saved my job!!!!

      A million thanks!!!!!!!

    • Kent

      Many thanks! It saved my time!

    • Gre

      Worked a charm.

    • balbino

      Thanks my friend..
      I had to remove a virus from a friend’s pc and this annoying check disk was bothering me, even though
      I let the pc finish the scanning thing…but did fix anything
      it kept scanning the pc every time i rebooted, so I tried
      this tweak and it worked…..

      thanks once more

    • Geri

      When I have the problem, I just run “chkdsk c: /f /r ” command in command prompt. It solves the problem and fixes all errors on the hard drive.
      My problem is that this command doesn’t want to finish on one of my hard drives.

    • Satyaranjan Chongtham

      Thanks a lot! At last I found the right site.

    • alkita

      thanx

    • http://cj-jackson.com Christopher John Jackson

      You should try running Windows 7, you get chkdsk too often and once it’s running I can’t stop it because my keyboard is immobilised while Windows is booting up.

    • gamma loader

      comment how to hack mafia wars

    • gamma loader

      wtf you are doing were is my cheat codes

    • bobby

      how to fix chkdsk from stopping halfway through a scan …

    • mary sanchirico

      I wanted to stop chkdsk but my problem is that my keyboard does not respond during the “To skip disk checking….” It works before it gets to that point.
      please help. thanks.

    • wez

      this was very helpfull thank you very much.

    • Aryan

      Thanks its Work.

    • Cary

      I had to remove the original BootExecute value and then run the chkntfs to get it right.

      My CEO is very pleased – I got his old win2000 working like a charm. Besides this annoying boot anomaly there were also some dll ambiguities…

      Thanks very much for the fix
      /C

    • jeremiah

      Cool tip. Thanks and have a blessed christmas and happy 2010!

    • lou

      thanks it works.. i have a 1 question my drive c is my windows driver 80gb it partition to half 40/40 i got drive d right now..i select the chkntfs /x c: d: command to fix my problem..i select the right command right ??

    • Amy

      I cannot stop chkdsk by pressing any keys within 10 seconds. It runs automatically. Please help me.

    • http://Thanksbuddy.......????? KHURRAM TUFAIL

      was helpful………
      but not be 100%.

    • bob parrish

      Awesome. Thank You Thank You. That did the trick.

    • bob parrish

      A note to others, in my case it was chkntfs /x c; f:
      Check your drives to see what letter they are assigned by going to >Start >My Computer. The letter designation will be in parenthesis.

    • bob parrish

      whoops, should have been a : after c not a semi-colon ; sorry about that.

    • kaleem arif

      i write chkntfs /x c: in command prompt but disk checking is not disabled , there is error” it’s not internal or external command” . what is the reason. please tell me Thanks!

    • eswar

      hi dear friends thnks for posting this useful info..it worked i am very happy ..but one small doubt is whats the need of such disk consistency error…whether its essential or not.kindly send to my MAIL ID pls.. with some others tips in xp..hats if u sir

    • maninder singh

      I cannot stop chkdsk by pressing any keys within 10 seconds. It runs automatically. Please help me.

      mobile no 09915658005

    • maninder singh

      Stop CHKDSK from running at boot time.

      1.Edit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager
      2.Change the BootExecute entry from:

      autocheck autochk * /………
      To:
      autocheck autochk *

      If you have scheduled CHKDSK for multiple volumes, there will be an autocheck entry for each volume. Delete the string from the BootExecute registry value for each volume you do not want checked.

      If you have NT 4.0, SP2, a new command line utility,CHKNTFS, will assist in preventing repeated CHKDSKs during reboots if the “dirty” bit is set.

      Type CHKNTFS /? and see KB article Q160416.

      thnx

      maninder troubleshooter

      mobiule number 09915658005

    • me

      I’ve tried recovering .chk files before. After looking online to learn how to do it, I discovered that it can’t even be done with most file types. So what the fuck is the point of this thing? It irreversibly “fixes” (ruins) files that might otherwise have been usable. It’s infuriating.

    • Brummie from UK

      lol thanks i owe u one!!

    • P

      thanks ! never thought that would go away

    • Richard

      gotta say, this was very helpful, thankyou v. much

    • http://www.franzcapone.blogspot.com Franz Capones

      Hey, I gotta tell you. This is the only one that really worked for me. thanks for the tip. more power!

    • gautam

      Thanks to u very much Its working fine

    • Nithin

      HI…
      Is there any problem… while checking the Hard disk on every restart…
      Since in my computer on every restart there is a chkdsk for d prompt….!!

      is this any bad sector in my HDD…??

      Pls help me……

    • babbo lie

      i hate windows, no talent ass clown software

    • Joseph

      Nice post,it was really annoying,but as i have done as u instructed,it’s okay,thank you

    • hehe

      thanks mr raymond. i hate windows as well chdisk.

    • bots

      hey raymond, my checkdisk doesnt happen when i start up, it happens at any time while using the laptop , a blue screen saying something is currupt flashes for one sec before rebooting and doing the checkdisk, how do i fix this?

    • http://notts.blogspot.com notts

      thank you raymond

    • adol

      thank u a lot it was useful

    • Archie McDowall

      Perfect Raymond, now perhaps you have a suggestion for me. My Lenove S10 netbook, will no longer, hibernate, restart, shutdown, sleep automatically thus I have to shutdown with power switch
      Any suggestions on how to resolve larger problem?
      I have removed all periphals and that does not work, tried various web solutions including updating driver for broadcom Network adapter
      Thanks

    • Berkay

      1-İ’m writing chkntfs /x c: to command but it says:
      The type of the file system is NTFS.

      So i can’t do anything..

      2-İs this disc checking is important?

    • Hyns

      It worked! Now I can boot my computer without going through this irritating windows check disk. It does not correct the error no matter how much i allowed it to pass the check disk test. Brilliant idea on registry tweak!

    • cris69

      thanks for this very useful trick…..

    • kryshna

      Thank you.

      the article is able to solve my issue and is highly appreciated,

      Thanks indeed,
      Krishna Chaitanya P

    • sanjay shaw

      thanks for the nice and easy solution to solve my problem.

    • carl

      So what do you do when you disable disk check yet it still comes up and then freezes while scanning?

    • Brahim

      This is very helpfull, specialy if we need to restart server remotely and you have disk that need check, it will take all the day and will not finish

      Thanks again for this article

    • n3o

      thanksss

    • Grace

      This is fantastic. I mean it is simple, straight to the point, and does what it says and solves the problem
      Many thanks for the article

    • http://www.187media.co.uk Kirykiry

      thanks for this article, straight to the point no mess or confusion like most other web pages. Solved my problem straight away. Only I have 1 more issue…. Data Cylic Redundancy Check?? Now i cant move or copy files off the said drive to reformat to ntfs from fat32, as this is the drive giving me errors with chkdisck, if you can help, i well apreciate it. Thanks again :DD

    • Jacques Bouchard

      Pure genius. Fast and easy. Thank you SO much for helping me fix this long-standing, annoying problem, both for me and for a friend with the same issue.

    • voltsky

      thanks, it really worked… straight and no many tweaks to apply… helpful….

    • vinay chavan

      Thanks a ton for solution which gives my friend a relief from long wait for startup.

    • Rick

      What if chkntfs is not in recovery mode? How then?

    • rahul

      this command not effecting please guide me stepwise

    • Bharath

      THANKU SO MUCH… Its Very Useful… I m Very happy with this solution…

    • Atish

      thanks man….now this anoying feature wont disturb me

    • Rudra

      Thx Dude……It helped me a lot….

    • mario0ne

      thanks :)

    • Anil G. Gajera

      thnx. buddy

    • http://www.rapmusicguide.com Rap Music Guide

      Yahoo! This solutions fixed my problem. Who needs Checkdsk anyways! lol Mine was using the D drive, so I changed C to D and it works perfectly. Cheers

    • yasir

      great man, excellent indeed

    • dimuthu

      great work, helped me to stop check disk at startup

    • Arthur Williams

      Hi,

      Likewise for me this particular solution is not working. At windows start up, it gives me the screen offering the chance to cancel within 10 seconds, however it ignores any key presses I make and counts down to 1 then freezes. If I keep clicking the On/Off power switch I eventually trick it into booting up.
      Could you maybe post the regedit needed?
      I run W7 64 bit on an SSD NTFS HDD.
      Any help much appreciated.
      Kind regards

    • justshootme

      Awesome man……

    • Marc Lester C

      thanks your the man.. bravo

    • pdejesus

      Yes it stopped the chckdsk, however you cannot perform disk defragment because the system still wants to check the disk. Problem not really solve, it just like you covered the problem so you wont see it but it’s still there.

    • Sowinov

      Thanks, I had a problem with dual-booting Arch Linux. Every time I started Windows, it would insist on turning its boot flag on. Of course two partitions cannot both have the boot flag, therefore the partition for my actual bootloader was disabled and I was locked out of Linux.

    • Jozef

      Today I have solved this issue on my computer by using another procedure. for more information see here:
      http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/chkdsk-runs-every-time-boot-t72388.html

    • Miss Ann Crits

      Does Registry Booster work on Windows 7-I don’t see it, only Windows XP???

      Thank you

    • Leo Masagca

      thanks a lot i tried the first solution and it works right away thank you very much

    • Károly Molnár

      I tried the first solution and it works right away

      Thank you very much.    

    • Károly Molnár

      Thank you very much.  

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