Vista - Need to **STOP** chkdsk at boot

My computer is running Vista Ultimate 64bit with SP1. It is installed on drive C: (PATA) and drive C: is fine. I have a 2nd drive, drive M: that is an SATA drive. The problem is, when Vista is started it starts checking the M: drive. It gets about 75% (block 52442) and freezes. Locks the keyboard, etc. I have to hard boot to get my system back.



If I disable the M: drive (via BIOS) the system boots and everything is ok, minus the M: drive, of course. When I re-enable the M: drive, the chkdsk starts again.

Since I can't boot with the M: drive, setting and clearing the "dirty bit" won't help. I have not been able to hit the any key to stop the check. I've tried various key combinations, plus break, ctrl-break, esc, esc esc esc. I cannot stop the chkdsk from starting. The registry fix seems more to apply to the system drive, than a non system drive... if I understand it correctly.

I have not been able to find a way to successfully stop the chkdsk from automatically starting. I've found several articles on how to start it (thanks google and search), but none on how to stop it.

I have thought about renaming chkdsk.exe and or chkntfs.exe and booting that way, but I don't want to crash Vista.

Is there a way do stop chkdsk at boot or can I safely rename chkdsk and chkntfs?

Thanks.

-JJ

Hi JJ,

Doing only Step One in this tutorial should stop chkdsk from running all the time at start up for you.

Chkdsk will Not Run at Startup in Vista

Shawn

I had read that while searching, but dismissed it as another way to get chkdsk to run and I didn't want to mess with the registry. So after your message I did some more google'ing and came up with:
autocheck autochk /k:m *
which has allowed me to boot without the check disk trying to fix that drive.

I need to spend more time "thinking outside of the box".

Thank you.

PS Great forum, one for the bookmarks.

-JJ

Your welcome JJ, and thank you for posting your results. I will work on a tutorial for stopping chkdsk at startup and see what all methods I can up with.

Shawn