How do I keep CHKDSK from running on every start up?

I have never had to do this in XP but there is an old 98 trick you might try. Start up in windows safe mode and let the scan disk run. If something flaky is running after the system boots that is causing windows not to change the "autocheck" entry it should not run.

Leo, don't you think there's something called "setting the Dirty Bit" in Windows XP that does the work of rechecking it everytime.

http://www.uninets.net/~blaisdel/whistler12.htm#DirtyBit

See the above link.

Ravi.

I have similar problem, and i know the cause. One of my hdds is hooked through bad ide cable (actually it sits in low-quality removable hdd rack). And now my XP keeps checking that hdd on every reboot (and doesn't find any errors).

Interesting fact: before there was other hdd connected to that cable and then no long check was performed on boot. System just occasionally then wrote error messages in system log saying "controller error/parity error" (something like that).

Possible cause in my case is that newer hdd supports higher Ultra DMA mode (5?) than my old hdd supported (2?).

My XP's
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager BootExecute
contains autocheck autochk * (XP default).

I'm still annoyed and don't know a solution.

Thanks Dan Ullman. It also works on XP.

This link might help out:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cfm?action=showthread&threadid=231103&forumid=1

Thanks Leo. It worked great. I was getting a BSOD with the missing autocheck system message. I had copied the autocheck.exe from my XP Pro CD to my System32 directory which didn't do anything, I thought it might have gotten corrupted, but booting OK to XP desktop. Added the BootExecute which for some reason was missing from session manager. Possible either CCleaner or RegSupeme cleaned up a little to much of a leftover software program that I in/uninstalled recently. Hard to keep track since I'm dual booting with Vista. Never fret as I backup every couple weeks with Acronis True Image. Got to love Acronis. I love messing around in the registry. Thanks again Leo. Great job on your site. Keep it up and you'll be eating lunch with Thurrott at the next MS convention.

Leo! You da MAN! The registry edit fixed this, after I tried all the other suggestions. I've bookmarked your site for the future. Thanks.

I use Windows 2000 and need CHKDSK run every time the system boots up. Referring your instruction, I type the following lines in BootExecute

0000 61 00 75 00 74 00 6F 00 a.u.t.o.
0008 63 00 68 00 65 00 63 00 c.h.e.c.
0010 6B 00 20 00 61 00 75 00 k. .a.u.
0018 74 00 6F 00 63 00 68 00 t.o.c.h.
0020 6B 00 20 00 2F 00 70 00 k. ./.p.
0028 20 00 5C 00 3F 00 3F 00 .\.?.?.
0030 5C 00 43 00 3A 00 00 00 \.C.:...

It works one time but after it the value in BootExexute automatically goes back to

0000 00 00 ..

Any idea to keep CHKDSK running at every boot up as it is necessary for my application.

Thanks.

It works fine with Windows XP PCs.

I carried out the above as disc check started running every time I re-booted. As far as I can see this is a space between '.... autochk *' and the asterisk. However if I leave a space the other wording pops up again when I re-check the registry so I deleted the space.

This has stopped autocheck from running (thank you!) but when I reboot a blue screen appears saying skipping disk check as disabled. Should that happen?

I assume I can still run it manually?

By the way I'm not very technically minded.

David Bieda