Checking disk error...can I cancel it?

When I do a disk check error on my drive (blue screens) every week it can takes longer. How can I cancel it... or is it okay to cancel this disk checking process without danger to the system? ...How?

 

Which version of Windows? I guess it's either 98/SE or Me, since the disk checks triggered by incorrect shutdown in 2000 and XP take a second or two and most of the time you're not even aware they're happening.

I would suggest that if, on occasion, you're in a real hurry, you can cancel the disk check, but if you can allow if to run most other times, I'd strongly advise you to do so, otherwise your disk will at some point become too corrupted to function as an OS any more.

More to the point is why do you get so many blue screens? They are usually the sign of either serious compatibility problems, corruption problems or hardware problems, none of which should be ignored.

 

check you drive with this tool (extract and double click)http://www.hdtune.com/
read manual and do quick scan first( less than a minute)
how big is your hard drive, chkdsk can be canceled any time. I suggest to do full chkdsk and leaving it overnight.when finished do it again next night.

 

I have Windows XP Pro w/ 40Gig HD.

Actually I don't have any problems with my disk. I just uses the built-in windows disk drive error checking utility. What I am trying to say was that... there are times that I need to cancel the disk checking error while it is in progress. You know, sometimes it could take longer and there are times that I need to cancel or stop the process but I don't know what or how to cancel it when it is in progress of checking errors. Can I just hit Esc key or maybe the Reset button on my pc?

 

If you're using the check disk facility which you get to by right-clicking your drive in My Computer and then selecting Check Now from the Tools tab, that doesn't make any changes to your disk at all, so you could Ctrl-Alt-Del and kill it off from the running apps list. Or you can just let it continue and carry on working with it running in the background until it has finished, although that might slow your PC down a lot.

If, however, you tick the boxes asking the disk checker to fix errors such that it then runs full-screen after the next boot, I'd strongly recommend that you leave it well alone until it's finished since, if you hit the reset button at the wrong time, you could end up with a corrupted drive which can't be read. Just make sure that when you kick it off, it's at such a time that you won't need to use the PC until it's finished - such as just before you go to bed.

It isn't necessary to check your drive that frequently with NTFS (if that's what you have) because it's pretty good at handling system crashes and the like. If you're using FAT, then regular checking is wise, although if it were my system, I'd change to NTFS as quickly as possible as it's more resilient, more secure and more efficient.

 

So there's no way to cancel its operation while it's in work in progress, and we can be possibly harm or corrupt the drive if it was cancelled.

By the way, my hard drives is FAT 32. So... it's just okay to check the disk for possible errors every week? Especially that I frequently used my Firefox ScrapBook extensions to copy webpages? And everytime I check the disk it always says that the volume is dirty....

 

Correct, that's most likely why there is no cancel button to stop the check. It's important enough to be allowed to run to completion.

Maybe you're doing something to cause minor corruption on your drive? Normally a drive shouldn't suffer corruption when in use, but in your original post, you said something about blue screens - they can certainly upset your drive data and should be investigated to stop the corruption happening, rather than just checking the disk more often to try and keep up with the corruption...

 

I doubt the reference was to BSODs. I think the reference was to the blue screens with white letters that windows displays while doing boot time disk-checking.

Unless I have a specific problem going on, I limit my boot time disk checking of all drives to what I call a "Prophylactic Reboot & CHKDSK" I perform with Windows' Task Scheduler in the wee hours of every Saturday morning. I never use the surface scanning option. I do my surface scanning about once a year with Spinrite 6.

 

For member cioffi,

As you have already created a thread concerning this matter here....I have removed your post from this 6 month old thread and ask that you continue with your problem in that thread Please and not post about your problem in other threads.

Bubba