How can I cancel CHKDSK in progress in Windows 7, without rebooting the computer or terminating the process against its will?

EDIT 2: Why? It was going to take an hour, and was already in the free space section of my drive, and the drive was dismounted (/R option), and I needed access to the drive to get back to work.

asked Dec 6 '11 at 15:02

8

  • Can I move it or do I have to wait for an admin?

    Dec 6 '11 at 15:08

  • You can re-ask it over there, but I'd just wait. It will be moved automatically when it gets to 5 votes

    Dec 6 '11 at 15:10

  • The real question is: why do you want to do it?

    Dec 6 '11 at 16:45

  • There is no safe way to terminate a chkdsk in progress, even if you do it will run at the next reboot since it sets the dirty bit when you run the command. There is no good reason to do this unless the PC is locked up during a chkdsk.

    Dec 6 '11 at 19:41

  • Does this answer help?

    Dec 7 '11 at 7:01

3 Answers 3

There is no safe way to terminate a chkdsk in progress. Even if you do, it will run at the next reboot since it sets the dirty bit when you run the command. There is no good reason to cancel chkdsk this way, unless the PC is locked up during a chkdsk.

Samir

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answered Dec 7 '11 at 17:42

2

  • The command that Dude provided should exclude the drive from the check at boot-time. I haven't tested this, so I can't guarantee it will work. This of course, does not answer the question of how to safely terminate a chkdsk in progress.

    Mar 17 '14 at 12:27

  • A good reason is I want to use my computer now and will accept the risk. I've pulled the power just to get back to the prompt asking me to skip before. Not saying it isn't risky but it worked. Why prompt and then take away your choice if you don't get to it in time.

    Nov 4 '16 at 3:18

You can use this as a last resort in case all else fails:

                  chkntfs /x C:

What this does:

Excludes a drive from the default boot-time check. Excluded drives are not accumulated between command invocations.

Samir

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answered Mar 17 '14 at 6:04

1

  • confirmed on a win7 pro OS, both NTFS and FAT32 volumes.

    Oct 23 '19 at 20:19

CTRL+C should work.

Another option would be to pause the process (Process Explorer for example) and let it run when you're no longer working on it. Don't quite see why killing the process would be that bad.

answered Dec 7 '11 at 15:11

3

  • How do you pause it?

    Dec 7 '11 at 18:07

  • CTRL+C does not work, unfortunately. And pausing it, if you can, would not relinquish the drive if it is locked out (dismounted), which happens when you use CHKDSK with certain parameters.

    Dec 7 '11 at 19:45

  • I just tried ctrl-C and it stopped just fine (Windows 8.1). But in another window (running with /R option) it would not stop. My guess is that it exits if it can do so without harm to FS structure and goes on otherwise.

    Dec 26 '15 at 21:09

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