Running XP Pro. All my volumes are locked out from CHKDSK due to some active programs keeping them on hold due to needing access to some file or another. Naturally Windows has C: locked out anyway, so when I do monthly maintenance I just let Windows schedule CHKDSK at next startup for all the drives and partitions at once.It used to be that when I would do this only for C: CHKDSK would run, finish, then start all over again and go through all five phases before restarting Windows. Now with all the other drives also scheduled to run CHKDSK outside the Windows environment CHKDSK just kept running for about eight hours. The only way to get it to quit was to wait until it finished a partition and said it found no errors and went on to recheck something else I would hit a key to abort the CHKDSK operation and go on to start Windows normally.Does anybody know why CHKDSK wants to go into continuous loop when it says it is satisfied that there are no errors in the drives already checked?I'd appreciate any help. :)P.S. I should mention that it isn't the fault of the registry entry having the value: autocheck autochk.exe * (or something similar, as I typed that from memory).

Hi Arthur-lw, · What switch did you use along with the chkdsk command? You might want to try the following and see if it helps. Method 1: Run this automated troubleshooter and check if it helps in any way. Open the website and click “Run now”. Method 2: You may try performing a chkdsk from recovery console and check if it helps. Step 1: Follow this article to boot into Recovery Console. Step 2: After booting into the Recovery Console, you should be in this folder “C:\WINDOWS”. For each of your hard disk partitions, you should then run:chkdsk /r For example, from the Recovery Console prompt, enter:chkdsk c: /r Refer to these articles for more information on chkdsk.How to perform disk error checking in Windows XPChkdsk in Windows XP Regards,Syed N – Microsoft Support--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

It all sounds confusing, so I would get your system back an unconfused state.Learn to use the chkntfs command. The chkntfs command will tell you what XP thinks about your volumes and will let you reset the registry back to the default value and clear any pending chkdsk operations you have scheduled manually.To use chkntfs, open a Command Prompt window by clicking Start, Run and in the box enter:cmdClick OK to open a Command Prompt window.Enter this command to see the chkntfs help option:chkntfs /?To see what XP thinks about any volume (like your C volume), enter the following command:chkntfs c:Check all your volumes. They are Dirty or they are not Dirty. There is a scheduled chkdsk or there is not a scheduled chkdsk.If any volume is Dirty, only a chkdsk /r will clear the dirty bit.To clear any pending chkdsk commands you may have scheduled, enter the following command:chkntfs /d (there will be no message result).That will reset the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\Session Manager\BootExecute value back to the default.The default value is for BootExecute is:autocheck autochk *Check your volumes again with chkntfs.If any volume is dirty, XP will still try to run chkdsk on it when the system reboots. The only way to clear the Dirty bit is with chkdsk. If the Dirty bit will not clear from the chkdsk run at reboot, you can run chkdsk from the Recovery Console and that might work and you will feel better when you can watch and control things yourself. If you have multiple Dirty volumes, I would suggest you boot into the Recovery Console and run chkdsk from there so you can see what is going on, then decide what do do (no guessing or trying things).If your drive is failing and the Dirty bit will not clear with chkdsk, you can tell XP to ignore the dirty bit on any volume until you can replace your hard drive or perhaps fix it with software from the HDD manufacturer. Don't guess what the problem might be - figure it out and fix it. I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

Sorry to be so long, folks. I somehow thought there would be some sort of notification when there was a reply to my original post. I did have the "Alert me" box ticked, but to no avail. No, the volumes were clean. I did check that. I neglected to mention something that could have been a clue to why this orrurs, but at the time I had no idea it was relevant. When I would do my routine maintenance before I would have C: and I: partitions scheduled for next startup, since I: is where I keep a pagefile. Supposedly according to Microsoft it helps to have pagefile.sys on a different physical drive than the operating system. When CHKDSK would run at restart (pale blue screen) it would repeat CHKDSK for both drives once. Now that I had the bright idea to have all the partitions scheduled for automatic checking without me having to babysit all that maintenance in a Windows environment, apparently it repeated the check for all the drives as scheduled for as many times as there were drives scheduled. In other words, have two drives scheduled and it will do them twice. Have seven scheduled and it will do them all seven times. I guess it's just some quirk about XP or something. If there is some registry fix I can apply that would be appreciated. But for now I'll just go back to doing the drive checking in Windows where possible, and just run C: and I: by themselves rather than doubling them up inside a single restart.

Hi Arthur-lw, · How have you set up the partitions for automatic checking? You may want to mention the specific steps you are trying in order to schedule disk check. Also, try to stop and restart the Task Scheduler service and check if it helps. Refer to this article to do the same. Regards,Syed N – Microsoft Support--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

I set them up in My Computer by right clicking on the drive, going to Properties, then Tools tab. All the partitions were set up to need a restart outside Windows by having some program needing access to the individual partitons, thereby requiring Windows to schedule the check on the next restart. One partition needs access to H: for example, because that is where I keep my wallpapers and other photos and the recycler needs to keep accessing there. In other partitions I have a backup service (SugarSync) that monitors files and folders in them in order to detect and then upload any changes onto their servers. Me? I thought this would be neat so I could just have them all be scheduled for checking all at once and I could go do other things, or just do this before I went to bed and then have a nice, maintained system when I awoke. Obviously this plan did not work very well, and now I just close out the wallpaper cycler and SugarSync, then run the individual partitions using the above method in Windows. Thanks for trying, but for now I will just do it all manually one at a time (except for C: and I:, obviously, which will require their own-and individual-restarts).