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Up until Windows 8, you could see what stage the boot time chkdsk was currently at, and the progress on the current option. However with Windows 8, you just get a percentage - which would be okay if it increased at a steady rate, and it does, up until around 27% - 30%, at which point you then have to wait for 3+ hours before the percentage increases again...
Apparently quite a few people have this problem, with the wait ranging from 3 hours to 5 hours or so (mine was about 3.5).
Aside from the fact that chkdsk is extremely slow (assuming the 5 stage process has been kept, surely it can be sped up), the fact that there is no indication (beyond the circles moving) that shows that the program is working - after all, as you all know from the C64, just because something is animated or flashing doesn't mean the program is working.
Microsoft do seem to have forgotten one cardinal rule : Always keep the user well information about the progress of long operations...
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The real question here is what is wrong with your installation that it needs to run chkdsk at boot time. This should be unnecessary with Windows 8 which can run filesystem checks in the background whilst the volume is online. Repairs may need a restart but should be very quick as the online scan will have logged the necessary repairs.
If chkdsk is running regularly at boot then there must be some other problem with your system. Thinking about it, I have never seen chkdsk run at boot time on my Windows 8 systems.
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There is nothing wrong with the system - I forced it into the boot time checking system as it is more thorough than running it in Windows (5 stages instead of 3), with the relevant flags.
The real question is why you didn't think of that 
Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Sep-13 02:36:42)
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Self-inflicted - fair enough. Microsoft don't recommend boot-time chkdsk in Windows 8. It's like trying to manage memory utilization manually; Windows is better at it than the end-user nowadays.
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At times, if the hard drive is locked then you have no choice - it has to be done at boot time.
Boot time is, of course better, as there are better checking options.
Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Sep-13 10:26:47)
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if the hard drive is locked then you have no choice That's not true any more - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/09/redesi...
Edit: As the blog says, the only time that chkdsk needs to be run at boot time is if there is severe corruption. The /r option now includes a physical scan of the disk - hence the long time.
Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Sep-13 10:38:21)
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Q) Will I ever need to run the old chkdsk /f?
There are cases where failing hardware can produce such severe corruption as to make the file system un-mountable; in these cases, you should perform a full, offline chkdsk to fix the file system. If for some reason this fails, we recommend that you restore from a backup.
Q) Is a reboot absolutely required to fix non-system volumes?
No, but the Action Center generally provides the simplest experience. If you�re an advanced user, you can fix non-system volumes by opening the properties of the drive, or by running chkdsk \scan <volume>: and chkdsk \spotfix <volume>: from the command line.
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Correct. As I noted in an edit to my previous post, severe corruption may require a boot time run of chkdsk. This includes a physical scan of the disk (hence the long time with large disks). chkdsk /r should not be used in the normal course of events (unless you have plenty of time on your hands).
chkdsk with a physical scan of the disk has always been a lengthy process.
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But previous versions kept the user informed to the progress - Windows 8 doesn't beyond a simple percentage with stays at around 27% - some people have been kept at this value for 5 hours...
The hard drive is active, so something is happening - so why not make sure the percentage is updated ?
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The hard drive is active, so something is happening Yes; the disk is being checked for faulty sectors. 5 hours isn't a long time for this with a large hard disk.
I guess Microsoft worked on the assumption that people running chkdsk in this way would be aware what was happening and would just leave it to do its thing. A progress dialog is sometimes a useful indication, but when you are running tools in an "expert" manner you should be aware of what is happening anyway. It's not as if there's anything you can do to speed it up, and cancelling is just going to mean starting over.
To reiterate, it should only be necessary to run chkdsk on boot in extreme circumstances. In all other cases chkdsk is far quicker than on previous versions and there is more chance that it can be done without a reboot.
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Self-inflicted - fair enough. Microsoft don't recommend boot-time chkdsk in Windows 8. It's like trying to manage memory utilization manually; Windows is better at it than the end-user nowadays. Bad disk perhaps http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/windows/f/4267036-s...
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I think that it's more a case of old habits. Techniques that were useful with XP do not apply to modern versions of Windows.
I still see examples of people on other forums asking how they can manage Windows memory as they are worried that it shows a lot of RAM being used; the simple answer is that you can't do a better job than the OS does. The same is increasingly true of file systems.
The old adage "if it ain't broke then don't fix it" has never been truer than it is nowadays when OSs contain sophisticated code that allows them to monitor and correct problems without user intervention.
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Yes, but looking at the 2 reports - SFC always finding corruption and Chkdsk taking ages to complete points to a disk going bad. Time to check out s.m.a.r.t. and perhaps new disk prices.
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As I said before, there isn't a problem with the hard drive or any hardware - it's various bugs/lack of information in Windows (there are common problems), which, with any luck 8.1 will do more than add a few extra graphics...
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A progress dialog is sometimes a useful indication, but when you are running tools in an "expert" manner you should be aware of what is happening anyway
But an indication of how far along the process is would be handy... An accurate one too - Windows 7 percentage value was widely inaccurate for stages 4 and 5.
Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Sep-13 15:19:46)
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If there are no problems, why are you running the utilities that fix problems?
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with any luck 8.1 will do more than add a few extra graphics... Windows 8.1 adds a lot more than a few extra graphics (not that I've noticed any extra graphics at all). Most pertinent in this context is ReFS.
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The real question here is what is wrong with your installation that it needs to run chkdsk at boot time. ^this^.
I can't remember the last time I saw Chkdsk running. Even on VMs (virtual machines) that are often killed off by the host being rebooted. NTFS is a journalling file system so should never need to be fixed after an OS crash.
---
Andrue Cope
Brackley, UK
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Because I want to... I wanted to see what difference there was between the Windows 8 and 7 versions.
Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Sep-13 20:31:15)
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Shame that Windows can't be booted off it...
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You'd be better off investigating the new options of chkdsk that make the boot time run unnecessary.
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Its not totally unnecessary
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No big deal. You have a small boot disk that is hardly ever going to change, so won't need to be checked and is unlikely to get corrupted. Then you use the more resiliant file system for volumes that are going to change frequently. It's a classic way of installing an operating system.
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Shame that Windows can't be booted off it...
It is, indeed, a shame it can't be booted from yet, but NTFS is a wonderful filesystem and incredibly resilient against any sort of logical corruption or otherwise. Unless you are in a rescue situation the /R is totally pointless, if you are in the situation where you need to be running /R on a hard disk you should be running it from another volume or boot media, ideally via cmd, not from the Windows boot process. If you have a single bad sector that is bubbling up to the OS/application layer - it is time to bin the HDD, the /R is last resort to salvage the integrity of the filesystem without resorting to data recovery.
Zen 8000 Pro
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That would be true if I had a faulty hard drive.
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If you don't have a faulty hard drive, there is no need to run chkdsk with /r .
You don't even need to run chkdsk with the /R option to find out if it has bad sectors - just check SMART data, this will detect and correct bad sectors well before Windows knows about them.
Zen 8000 Pro
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This post wasn't to discuss whether or not it should be run - perhaps re-reading my original post may help to refresh your memory about what the post was about...
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I seem to recall when running the /R option the progress status has always been a bit inaccurate, even in Windows 95 it took ages and was hard to calculate when it would finish? If I ever run an /R I expect 12-24hrs downtime..
Zen 8000 Pro
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You would think they would be able to calculate percentages correctly, after all these years...
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Probably wouldn't take much code to figure out how many sectors are being scanned, and get a ETA using total sectors, but I think Microsoft would tell you its not worth the time coding this in.
Zen 8000 Pro
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Surely until an error is found, and is then dealt with, the time can't be estimated accurately.
Was Eclipse Home Option 1 & VM 2Mb
Now O2 standard
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It knows how many sectors there are, and which index is currently being processed. Time can be gauged during the first 3 phases to calculate how long on average it takes to read a sector. Whilst it takes more time the further you go out, it should be easy to compensate.
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No. You are dealing with a case where the disk is severly corrupted (which is why you are running the boot time check) and have no idea how long it will take to scan each sector. The disk may well have physical defects and it may take a number of attempts to read a sector or to decide that it is unreadable. It would be easy to provide a percentage but, in this case, it would be impossible to know that it is meanigful.
You are ignoring the fact that this option is only intnded to be used as a last resort when the disk is in a bad state. Inaccuate information is probably worse than no information.
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No. You are dealing with a case where the disk is severly corrupted (which is why you are running the boot time check) and have no idea how long it will take to scan each sector. The disk may well have physical defects and it may take a number of attempts to read a sector or to decide that it is unreadable. It would be easy to provide a percentage but, in this case, it would be impossible to know that it is meanigful. In addition to that if the indexes are corrupted it's difficult to know how long it will take to fix them back up. NTFS uses B-Trees for directories and in some cases allocation information. Regenerating either of those would be complex and completion hard to predict.
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Andrue Cope
Brackley, UK
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You are forgetting inaccurate information is already being given... Anyway, a completion time isn't important - percentage completed is.
Edited by deleted (Mon 23-Sep-13 17:42:29)
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I'd have thought that time to completion was the only information of any importance. If it's got half way in 2 minutes but is going to take 2 days to complete then a reading of 50% would be rather misleading. And what do you mean by percentage completion? Since the last phase is a scan of the physical disk it is always going to take orders of magnitude greater than the other phases. Realistically you would assign 1% to everything but the scan and 99% to the scan.
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