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Last Friday, before I left work, I started a disk error check using the GUI found on the Tools tab of the disk properties. I checked the boxes for "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors." It hadn't finished by the time I left.

When I came in this morning, there was a message box saying that the check had completed successfully, but I haven't been able to find the results (i.e. if there were any corrupt files or other errors). A subsequent run of chkdsk (in the console with no switches) informs me that there are no bad sectors and that the indexes check out and there are no errors.

Usually I run chkdsk on the command line and am able to look over the results. When its run on the OS drive, it logs an event in Application section that shows the same result text as the console prints.

Are the results of the Disk Error Checking utility logged anywhere so I can review them?

EDIT TO ADD: This was not the OS drive and was connected via USB.

2 Answers 2

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They are logged in event viewer.

Start -> Run -> type "eventvwr.msc" (no quotes) -> ENTER. Click on Application and select the most recent winlogon entry.

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Here's what I've found researching my question:

1) Running chkdsk.exe (or using the XP Disk Error Check GUI) on a drive that has open handles, such as the OS drive, causes XP to ask if it can schedule autochk.exe to run at the next boot (uses the BootExecute registry key as described here).

As Moab points out, when a disk is checked at boot time by autochk.exe, an entry will be made in the Application Events Log as 'winlogon' with the results.

2) You can schedule any drive to be checked at boot time, and therefore have an Application Event entry, using chkntfs.exe: chkntfs /c d:

3) From the cmd line (or a .bat) for a drive that is not currently in use: chkdsk e: /r Or if you want to write the results to a file: chkdsk e: /r > c:\CheckDriveE.log

4) If you use the disk check utility GUI on a drive that is not in use (and therefore doesn't require a reboot) there is no log of results. The message box the pops up at the end of the process may inform you if there was anything wrong.

Sidenote: the Logfile referenced in the chkdsk results (as a 65536kb file on my machine) is actually the NTFS metafile $Logfile that is used to keep track of changes on the drive.

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