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If you find that Check Disk or ChkDsk is stuck at a particular percentage or hangs at some stage in Windows, then this post suggests some troubleshooting steps that may help you. It could be 10%, 12%, 27% or any such percentage. Again, it could be stages 2, 4, 5 or any such.
ChkDsk stuck or hangs
If ChkDsk hangs or is stuck, we suggest you try the following suggestions:
- Wait for it to complete
- Restart your PC & run Disk Cleanup, SFC, DISM.
1] Wait for it to complete
The best suggestion I have to give is to hang on and let it run. It may take a couple of hours, but given the time, it is known to complete in most cases. If need be, leave it overnight and let it run its course.
2] Restart your PC & run Disk Cleanup, SFC, DISM
If this does not help, restart your computer, by pressing the power button. During the next boot, press the Esc, Enter or the appropriate key to stopping the running of ChkDsk.
Once you boot to the desktop, do the following:
- Run Disk Cleanup utility to clear your junk files.
- Open an elevated CMD type
sfc /scannowand hit Enter to run the System File Checker. - Once the scan is completed, restart your computer.
- Remember to exit ChkDsk during boot.
- Next, again open CMD as admin.
- Type
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth - Hit Enter to repair the Windows image.
Now see if ChkDsk is able to complete the scan. As I mentioned earlier, keep it overnight if need be.
Hope it helps.
This problem occurs more in Windows 7 and earlier. Windows 8 and Windows 10 handles disk check operations more efficiently. Disk Error Checking now is a bit different from the earlier versions of Windows. In Windows 8, Microsoft has redesigned chkdsk utility - the tool for detecting and fixing disk corruption.
Microsoft introduced a file system called ReFS, which does not require an offline chkdsk to repair corruption - as it follows a different model for resiliency and hence does not need to run the traditional chkdsk utility. The disk is periodically checked for file system errors, bad sectors, lost clusters, etc, during Automatic Maintenance and you now no longer need to really go and run it.
This post will help you if Scanning and repairing drive is stuck Scanning and repairing drive is stuck in Windows 10.
It is important that you keep a watch on your Hard Disk health, and thus imperative that ChkDsk completes its run. But if you wish to, you can cancel the ChkDsk operation.
If you need more inputs you can always take a look at the ChkDsk log files.
Related reads:
- ChkDsk or Check Disk runs at every startup
- ChkDsk or Check Disk will not run at startup.
