Can't Disable Autochk or Chkdsk

Ok ...this is going to be rather long because I want to document everything I have tried in order that hopefully someone can guide me on what to try next.

My wife's laptop (Dell Insprion 1525) runs Vista. It is the only Vista machine left in the house and I do not have a Vista boot CD/DVD nor can I find the OS Recovery CD/DVD that came with it years ago.

The original problem was random lockups that appeared to be HDD related. I tried to run chkdsk but every time it would start to run (at boot up) it would stop immediately with a message that it had been aborted (just like if you hit a key during the timeout period).

I researched this problem and found that people had fixed it via changing the timeout on chkdsk down to 0.

This indeed did allow chkdsk to run on the next boot, however it hung up. Restarting again it would get a little farther each time. Finally it got to where it would stop at 64% of step 5 of 5. I have allowed it to sit for 18 - 20 hours to make sure it was indeed stopped.

This presented a clear problem because with the timeout set to 0 there was no way to abort chkdsk to try and find another solution. At this point I pulled the hard drive and connected it via a USB bridge to my laptop and ran chkdsk on it. Chkdsk ran through completely. It did identify a out 50 bad sectors and recover some bad files, but it completed.

I then reinstalled it in her machine and booted. It of course started chkdsk and hung in the same place.

At this point I began investigating ideas such as editing the registry on that drive when it was attached to my machine in order to try and reset the chkdsk timeout. I found some discussion of "load hive" but made no real sense of it and looked for other options.

I tried startup options (like safe mode) to no avail. All Safe Mode starts hung at "crcdisk.sys". In the startup options though I found a Repair Console so I started that up. It gave me the options for repair that I have seen online associated with starting from a Vista boot disk. I then thought I could use the command prompt to fix the chkdsk problem.

In the command prompt I tried the following things, with a reboot in between each:

1. chkntfs /T:30 (rebooted, chkdsk began running immediately like before)
2. chkntfs /X C: (rebooted, chkdsk began running immediately like before)
3. regedit checked HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager for BootExecute in order to disable autochk on the C: drive and there was no BootExecute entry there. The was also no AutoChkTimeOut entry. I tried adding the AutoChkTimeOut entry and setting it to 30 first. Same result as before. After rebooting again and reentering the repair console/cmd prompt, I tried regedit again and my previous entry was gone. I reentered the AutoChkTImeOut entry and created the BootExecute Entry correctly to skip autochk on the C: drive and rebooted. Same result.

SO, apparently, the registry editing does not "hold" and survive a reboot. Is this possible because it is some how part of the startup options and not from a boot cd/dvd?

I have a brand new upgrade disk for Win 7 from Vista that I could use, however, the whole issue is that my wife's old email is tied up in outlook and I need to access/backup that and move it to a new machine for her. Obviously I cannot access that without booting the machine.

So, I am stuck.

Ideas?

 

Hi,

You are already beyond my experience in troubleshooting this Autochk problem. I did notice one thing that you may have overlooked and that is that you have to load your registry hive from the C: drive into regedit when you are booting from the recovery environment. Otherwise you are only editing the temporary registry that the RE is using.

Take a look at this guide: http://4sysops.com/archives/regedit-as-offline-registry-editor/

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It seems obvious that your HD is going bad. Which brand of HD is it? Western Digital has a decent diagnostic utility that can attempt to fix errors. Other brands are not so good at actually fixing anything.

I think I might try running chkdsk on the other computer again to see if it again finds and can fix any more errors.

Are you running Outlook or Outlook Express? I'm thinking there should be a way of retrieving email from a non booting machine.

 

It is sounding like you have a hard disk problem. I wouldn't trust that drive. Purchase a new hard drive, get the recovery disks from Dell and rebuild the OS. Then restore the data that you saved off.

 

I think this is exactly what my problem was. I knew somehow the registry editing was not "taking". Off to follow that guide you linked to. I will return hopefully with a positive result. Thank you for your response.

 

If your chkdsk found 50 bad sectors and tried to fix them, you may be in an area of diminishing returns. There are lots of things CHKDSK does trying to correct errors it finds, but it can't fix everything. Depending how bad your disk is you could be left with pieces of files everywhere.

 

I would strongly suggest you use your USB bridge to pull your files off of that disk BEFORE you run CHKDSK any more!!!!!!

 

Well .... loading the hive worked correctly as far as I can tell, however, when I load the system hive I need it to include CurrentControlSet but it doesn't so I cannot edit the correct registry keys.

So, first off, anyone familiar enough with all of this to know why all of the hive did not load?

Secondly, I tried getting to the outlook files when i had the drive attached to my machine via the USB bridge but windows denied me access to the folder where it is stored. I got admin access to the user folder but the files are in %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook and I cannot get into the local settings folder.

If I can figure out how to get the pst file from outlook I can stop worrying about the chkdsk issue.

SO, help with either direction is appreciated.

 

Right click on the local settings folder, go to properties and select the security tab. Click advanced and click the owner tab. Click edit and add the name of the user that you are logged in as. Check the box that says replace owner on sub containers and objects and click ok.

 

Ok one last attempt.... I followed the above instructions and after some trial and error managed to take ownership and give myself full permission to all of the files and folders in my wife's user folder. I can access most everything but the Local Settings folder and the Application Data folders both say they refer to a location that is unavailable ....

I am getting the feeling I may just be screwed without snagging a vista disk and trying a system repair from there.

 

Hi,

It appears that Controlset001 is usually the control set that is copied and used as current control set. Controlset002 is usually the control set used for LastKnownGoodConfiguration. So you would edit ControlSet001 and the when you restart Windows will copy that to CurrentControlSet and use it to try to boot.

As far as Local Settings and Application Data folders you should be able to take ownership of them individually. Right-click and select Properties. Security tab then hit Edit and it should prompt you to replace the owner.

Changing the owner should work. Booting to a small linux USB flash drive would also give you unfettered access to all files without any permissions issues It you still have problems then that would be an easy way to get to the files.

 

Crazily enough ... editing the registry to BOTH reset the autochk timer to 30 seconds and tell it to ignore the C drive still did not work. Chkdsk started immediately.

I finally just took the advice and burned a KNOPPIX DVD and moved all the files i needed off to an external drive. I am just going to put it all on a little Dell Inspiron Duo my wife has been using until I can buy a replacement hard drive for her laptop.

Thank you both for your help.

DJ

 

I'm glad you got your files. I hope it is straight forward importing the mail into the other system.

One thing I had thought about testing but didn't have the time was i wonder if you used Knoppix to copy the whole Windows folder to a new folder Windows1. Then renamed Windows to Windowsold and then Windows1 to Windows.

Now chkdsk would still run but the Windows files would be the best they could be and it would be a matter of whether or not the Windowsold folder still having some hard to read files would keep Windows from starting.

I've never tried copying the whole Windows folder but I would think Linux would do it completely. It is just a thought since you have spent so much time on it already. You could always rename the folders to get back to where you are now.

 

Nicely done. Good luck.