charles_ebs
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AUTOCHK fails. Is there a Boot log?
The "dirty bit" is set on my system drive, but every time NT boots,AUTOCHK reports that it can't get an exclusive lock on the drive, so it won't scan it. I suspect that some driver is loading at boot time that is opening files(?) I checked "Drivers" from the Control panel and didn't see anything suspicious. The driver listing from the /SOS flag in BOOT.INI scrolls by too fast for me to see it, even after several boots.
NT has lots of logfiles, but I've never found one that logs boot events (like WIN95 does). Is there a way to turn such a log on, or does anyone have any other ideas as to why I can't check/repair the system drive?
NT has lots of logfiles, but I've never found one that logs boot events (like WIN95 does). Is there a way to turn such a log on, or does anyone have any other ideas as to why I can't check/repair the system drive?
listening.
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Now why didn't my search of the Knowledgebase turn up that article? Must be a defective keyboard... :-) I've played with the drivers a bit already, but only found a couple of things that I recognized as non-essential to booting. I hadn't thought of the alternate profile thing, though; I'll pursue that angle and attack the drivers more aggressively & let you know what happens.
Good luck, I will hear from you.
Certain Antivirus programs lock the drive as you describe.
If you install NT to another directory on the system, you can boot with this, it will run AUTOCHK for you, then you can switch back again.
If you install NT to another directory on the system, you can boot with this, it will run AUTOCHK for you, then you can switch back again.
ASKER
Thanks to all for the suggestions. I ended up creating a test hardware profile and disabling a BUNCH of "system"-startup devices (apparently autochk runs after loading both "boot" and "system" drivers). I still don't know which one it was (I became impatient and disabled 6-8 of them my last boot), but I now have a hardware profile labeled "CHKDSK" that I can use whenever I need to scan the system drive.
The suggestion about the alternate OS installation would work too, assuming you had a partition to use, but even with the tedium, the device-disabling was still faster.
The suggestion about the alternate OS installation would work too, assuming you had a partition to use, but even with the tedium, the device-disabling was still faster.