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CheckDisk Cheekiness

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by shanghai sam

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OK, who's come across this Windows Wackiness?

We start with a fresh install from CDROM (no ghosting involved)of WXP-Pro (corporate edition) on many computers, all with wiped HDDs.

On some computers, after said uneventful installation, running checkdisk (that is, going to My Computer>Local Disk [C: Drive]>Properties>Tools>Error Checking>Check Now>both auto fix and recovery of bad sectors selected>restart to initiate checkdisk) results in a routine run of checkdisk followed by the machine hanging up after the checkdisk reports itself as done. [Normally, the check disk operation would complete and the machine would restart itself and boot up like it is supposed to.]

The hanging situation can be "cured" by doing a hardware reset or power cycle, then pressing F8 to get the startup options, and then choosing Last Known Good.

After getting these systems to start using Last Known Good, an examination of the registry reveals the following: Navigate to HKey Local Machine>System key and you will find several keys called CurrentControlSet, ControlSet001, 002, etc. Under these keys, navigate to the Control>Session Manager> key and note the values for BootExecute.

Typically, for all but one of the ControlSet keys, the value for BootExecute will be "autocheck autochk *". For one of the ControlSets, the value will have an extra line, in this case Line 1 below, and look like this:
[Line 1] autocheck autochk /r\??\c:
[Line2] autocheck autochk *

If you manually edit outthe contents of Line 1, the machine will restart normally. But, as long as Line 1 remains in the registry, the macine will hang on boot up.

We have yet to put our finger on why this is happening. There is no detectable correlation between this problem and, say, mass storage controllers, and this has happened on machines with Intel and SiS chipsets.

-Dan Sarandrea
MCSE

2 replies

by saihib

Check out this Microsoft Knowledge Base article. It specifically mentions the Registry entries you refer to:
CHKNTFS.EXE: What You Can Use It For (Q160963)

by dan in philly

Thanks to Don'tKnowSquat (c'mon, everyone knows *something*;-) for your response.

The KB article does soldify one thing, that running chkntfs is not going to cure my problem for the reasons cited in the article.

Apparently checking the two boxes in the Tools>Error Checking dialoq box (both auto fix and recovery of bad sectors) is the GUI way of setting the command chkdsk /f /r to run at the next boot up.

The problem seems to be centered around the checkdisk operation not completing properly, resulting in the hang and further resulting in the "loop" created by not clearing the autocheck autochk /r\??\c: value out of the various Control Set registry keys.

The question remains, what is causing the hang, which is causing the checkdisk "loop" and how can it be fixed?

I'd hate to have to do a registry edit after every checkdisk.

-Dan Sarandrea MCSE

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