BUG: CHKDSK stuck at 11% for hours, but was actually working

Anonymous

I ran CHKDSK on my Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit laptop. The message said that it was up to 11% and then it stopped advancing for ages. I thought that CHKDSK had stalled or crashed, but it turns out that it was working, it's just that it took several hours to complete one stage but it didn't update the progress indicator.

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I ran CHKDISK from the command prompt on my C drive and it offered to run the command on the next restart. I answered yes and restarted, and CHKDSK ran, updating its progress, but it stopped at 11% and stayed there for ages and ages.

Note that in Windows 8.1, CHKDSK doesn't display lines of text as it goes along like in certain earlier versions of Windows. It just displays a single line, e.g. "Scanning and repairing drive (C:): 11% complete" that gets updated from time to time.

At first I thought it was stalled or crashed, so I rebooted the laptop. CHKDSK ran again and once again got stuck at 11%. So I rebooted the laptop with a recovery USB and ran CHKDISK from the command prompt. This one displayed more progress information. It estimated that a particular stage would take 3 or 4 hours (it fluctuated from one to the other at first before settling on over 3 hours and then slowly counting down). After several hours it completed successfully, fixing some errors and reporting its results.

I rebooted the computer again, from the hard drive. CHKDSK ran again (since it didn't complete before) and after several hours it completed. It warned me that Windows didn't close normally (because I interrupted the previous CHKDSK) and gave me some options.

So it looks like there's one stage in CHKDSK where the status line isn't getting updated regularly. Could Microsoft please fix this?

EDIT: corrected spelling of subject heading.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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66 answers

Anonymous

2017-01-05T17:09:48+00:00

How'd it go with the restart? I'm currently at 72 hours and stuck at 10%
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Anonymous

2017-01-05T16:51:29+00:00

Hey guys.

So I'm reading this thread and I didn't find anyone that had it on longer than I have had it. It's been on the scanning and repairing C drive 10%, for 3 DAYS. Can someone pllleeassseeeees tell me what to do.
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Anonymous

2016-12-23T09:56:07+00:00

That is absolutely false information on BOTH counts. Five years for a drive is OLD, and drives can have corruption even if they are only days old. AND, chkdsk in no way harms or shortens the life of a drive. What absolute ridiculous nonsense.
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Anonymous

2016-10-22T09:25:33+00:00

"I ran CHKDISK from the command prompt on my C drive and it offered to run the command on the next restart."

It's running during the boot process so the option to exit isn't available.
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Anonymous

2016-09-25T14:40:46+00:00

I found this at another site, it's pretty useful:

Windows 8 and Newer

Windows 8 takes care of these kind of issues in a much more efficient way. The file system is always checking itself for issues. Issues that don’t require your hard drive to be offline are fixed immediately. Issues that require your hard drive to be offline, like when you restart, will be logged in a sort of To Do list.

Because only items that require the drive to be offline need to be fixed, Check Disk can complete its job in a matter of seconds to maybe a couple minutes. To do this, click on your Start button. Type cmd in the Search programs and files box. The top result should be cmd.exe. Right-click on that and select Run as Administrator.

start-command-prompt-through-start-menu

Just to make sure that all issues are found and dealt with, run a check disk scan first, by typing in the command

chkdsk C: /scan

and pressing the Enter key. As it scans, it will fix anything that it can without being offline. Once that is finished, type in the command

chkdsk C: /spotfix

and press the Enter key. You’ll see the command prompt tell you that it, “…cannot run because the volume is in use by another process.” It will then ask you if you, “Would… like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)” Type Y and press Enter to schedule Check Disk. Now, restart your computer.

This time Check Disk will run and fix any problems that were identified in the scan. Because it’s only fixing those specific problems, the process only takes a few seconds to a few minutes.

windows-8-spotfix

Your file system should now be repaired and Check Disk should not run on start-up anymore, unless there’s another issue.
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