Usually, when your computer is shutdown in an improper way and next time you turn it on, the Windows checkdisk starts to check your disk(s) for errors. You can manage this check disk at boot time using the command chkntfs in Windows 7. Here is how :
When a non-removable disk is accessed in Windows, its dirty flag is turned on in the Registry. When the Windows is shutdown properly, the dirty flag is turned off. At boot time if Windows finds the dirty flag turned on for any non-removable disk, it starts the checkdisk process for that disk. The chkntfs command lets you manage the dirty flag property for all the hard disks and other parameters for bootup checkdisk.
The chkntfs command is to be issued in an elevated command prompt. The following are the different ways it can be used :
- Find if a disk drive is dirty : You can find if the dirty flag for a drive letter is turned on at the present time, by giving command chkntfs X:, where the X: is the drive letter you want to check the dirty flag for.
- Find the autocheck time countdown : You can find out the AUTOCHK timer countdown shown at Windows boot up when checking a disk for errors. The default time is 10 seconds. The command line is chkntfs /T
- Set the autocheck timer countdown : You can change the AUTOCHK timer countdown shown at Windows boot up. The default time is 10 seconds. The command line is chkntfs /T:time where time is the time in seconds.
- Schedule a drive to be checked on next reboot : You can manually set a drive to be checked at the Windows boot up. The command line is chkntfs /C X: where X: is the drive letter of the drive you want to schedule to be checked.
- Restore all settings to default : You can restore all the settings to their default. The command line is chkntfs /D.