How to tell what's going on without staying glued to a monitor, and what to do if it didn't.
Since nightly chkdsk verification was added to ImageManager in 2020, we've identified hundreds, perhaps thousands, of file system and data issues on production volumes. While this was a surprise in itself, the bigger surprise to us has been the number of times where a scheduled chkdsk didn't run, or didn't fix any issues when the system was rebooted. We put this guide together to try and help.
When attempting to run "chkdsk /f /r /x" on a system volume, or one that that can't be taken offline while Windows is running, you are given the option to schedule that chkdsk to run on the next reboot instead. This feature allows chkdsk to repair issues that would have otherwise been impossible to correct while Windows was running. But there's no clear indication whether chkdsk has run or not if you're not physically in front of a monitor connected to that server while it reboots.
So to check on whether that chkdsk ran or not, we have to rely on the Windows Event Viewer. In the Application Log, if chkdsk did run there will be an entry from the source "Wininit" which will detail what was found and fixed, if anything. Entries from the source "Chkdsk" are run within Windows.
You can see above this Wininit event shows the check has been scheduled.
I don't see any Wininit events. What next?
If you scheduled a chkdsk, but after reboot you don't see that Wininit event, this means that chkdsk didn't run. In this case, we recommend using some of Microsoft's tools to make sure the autochk tool that runs chkdsk at boot is in working order. Try these steps in this order for the best chance of success.
Use DISM to repair the Windows image
For more details, check out this detailed article from the great team over at windowscentral.com
The first step is to make sure the Windows Image Store is in good working order. Think of this as a box full of untouched copies of most of the important parts of the Windows OS, ready to be used in case any of the working copies get corrupted. First we want to make sure that rats haven't gotten into the box before we use these copies to fix the system.
Begin by opening an administrative command prompt, then run the following command:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
This will check for any inconsistencies in the Image Store. It may appear stuck for several minutes, just give it a bit and it will complete. If any problems are found, make sure you run the following command to fix them:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
This command will take longer, but should still finish eventually. If it's unable to fix any problem, we recommend using the article noted above to dig deeper.
Use SFC to repair system files
If you'd like to get it straight from the horses mouth, here's Microsoft's article: Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files
Once you've verified that the Image Store is intact (or fixed any issues with it), it's time to check the Windows OS for problems, and use the Image Store to correct them. To do this we'll use SFC. You can use the same administrative command prompt as before and use this command:
SFC /scannow
This will automatically find and fix errors with the Windows OS. As before it will take some time, and may seem to hang for a time, but it will complete if left alone. If it does find any issues, try running the command at least 3 times, or until the result is that no issues were found.
I actually found issues when I ran SFC on my own system to grab this screenshot, so I ran it again to make sure they were all fixed.
Try chkdsk again
Once you've completed this process, and gotten a good clean scan from both DISM and SFC, you're ready to try again. Schedule another chkdsk for the next reboot, and after that reboot is complete, check the Event Viewer Application Log for that Wininit event so you can see the results.
What if that still didn't work?
Well now you've got two problems... potential disk or file system issues that we've identified with the nightly backup image chkdsk, but also the fact that chkdsk won't run on boot despite the OS looking ok. We can't really help any further with the second one, but we recommend you don't ignore it either. It might be time to give Microsoft support a call.
For the chkdsk of the volume however, there is one more option. You'll need to either have physical access to the system if it's physical, or access to the hypervisor if it's a virtual machine. You'll need to either use the Windows Advanced Startup options to trigger an advanced reboot, or interrupt the normal startup to boot into recovery mode, and then select to open a command prompt. Here you can manually run the "chkdsk /f /r /x" command and monitor the process and results to make sure it runs.
This has been one of our longer articles, because this is a fairly complex issue. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to or support team for help, we're always happy to help you through these difficult waters.