Chkdsk and Defrag
Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes
http://live.pirillo.com/ – One of our community members recently attempted to run a defrag on his computer. During the defrag, he received a message that chkdsk wanted to run. He’s not so sure what this means, or if he should allow it.
If your computer tells you that it needs to run Chkdsk, then you definitely want to listen. A chkdsk scans your hard drive, and verifies the integrity of file and folder structures. Sometimes, it can even recover corrupt data.
When you experience a hard drive failure, it’s not always the entire HD. Often, it may be just certain sectors. In this case, the Operating System shouldn’t write to those sectors. Chkdsk is built into Windows, and it can be used to scan those sectors, and even fix them when possible.
To run a chkdsk, you need to:
- Open My Computer
- Right click on your hard disc (often the C: drive)
- Choose properties
- Click on the Tools tab
- Under error checking, click “check now”
- When the box pops up, check the box for “automatically fix file system errors” or “scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”
- Let the scan run. This can take quite awhile, depending on the size of your hard drive.
There are, of course, other shortcuts and ways to get to the chkdsk. You can get there from a command prompt, for one. What other shortcuts do you have for running a chkdsk scan on your computer? Have you ever had to use this, and did it help? Let me know!
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5 Comments
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September 30th, 2007
at 9:27pm
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kiran
September 28th, 2007
at 7:53pm
> Have you ever had to use this, and did it help?
Huh…! I got into some strange and messy situations when i ran those steps a month back. I did the exact same thing you are talking about..
(Defrag and chkdsk)
Problem #1
The CPU utilization has gone up ever since.
Problem #2
Sound drivers got screwed up some how. Now the audio is very choppy.. (especially when CPU utilization goes above 60-70%).
Never had those two problems before Defrag/Chkdsk.
Yes, it is strange.. i do not see any correlation between Chkdsk/defrag and the problems i’ve listed either..But it is what it is.
I looked all over the net for any help. Found no useful references.
I tried to rerun Defrag/Chkdsk to see it “magically” fixes the problem.. No luck either…
Just a word of caution!
benjfromthephils
September 29th, 2007
at 10:58am
There is a more thorough chkdsk that i know. It’s in the “windows recovery console”. And that is what i usually use for our pc.
And one thing also you must check your disk for inconsistencies before you defrag, because there might be a possibility that you have a corrupted sector on your dirve, and if you defrag your system, the system might put a file in a corrputed sector. thus corrupting also the file…
Al Falk
October 1st, 2007
at 8:04am
I prefer to run SFC /scannow ( system file check ) from the command prompt.This is for XP, XP PRO; I don’t have or need Vista.
Be SURE to add the space after sfc !
Go to start, run, type ” sfc /scannow”. When done, reboot..
I can also HIGHLY recommend “Advanced Window Care (AWC)
from IOBIT.COM. Very thorough and safe. I do this once a week,
it cleans ALL the garbage !
gimpelthefool
October 1st, 2007
at 12:13pm
You can make a desktop shortcut to chkdsk using the path C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CHKDSK.EXE.
check out GIMPEL’S GALLERIES
http://hometown.aol.com/gimpelthefool/myhomepage/brag.html