For a while my computer has prompted me to run CHKDSK every time I turn it on. It comes to a blue screen and says press a button to cancel or wait 10 seconds to perform it. I tried to let it run but it takes an extremly long amount of time to get through. I am typing from another computer because it still hasn't finished and it has been going for days. It has been up to "Recovering orphaned files" for the whole time. Every time I check back it has made a lot of progress because the number of the file is up, but it seems like it will never end (up to around file 350,000 right now). I really don't want to leave my computer on for weeks so can someone please help me with this problem. Thanks a lot.

you could skip it by pressing esc...

have you gotten a S.M.A.R.T. drive error lately? i don't exactly want to say kill the computer and reboot because if its necessary files, that could cause a problem.

I haven't gotten one of those errors and I know that I can skip it, but is it best to let it go untouched for days or to just cancel it every time i boot up and ignore it?

well, is there an external drive connected to it, or a slave drive inside?

if so, then thats whats causing the scan...if not, theres just as issue with windows...it happened to my sisters windows 98 computer, turns out the HDD was on its way out, but there was no S.M.A.R.T. scan to tell us...my dad's actually working on it now...i don't quite understand what he's doing...not that i don't know about computers, but because what he's doing isn't quite smart.

No there isn't any external drive, in fact it is a laptop. Any idea on how many files it would go up to? (meaning the number of the files, it was up to 350,000 a while ago.)

Doesn't sound good - you have a good backup of your files made recently? You might need it.

sadly no I don't have a backup. The computer still would function if I restarted it but I would need to skip the chkdsk blue screen every time. I would do that except i think there is something wrong with it so I am trying to let it run.

You should let the chkdsk finish. Windows XP doesn't automatically schedule a chkdsk unless it's detected an error in the file system. Most of the time it can recover the files, but if there are bad blocks on the surface of the disk it may not be able to.

As cluberti said, I would back up all your important files immediately, the drive seems to be on its way out. Back everything up to DVD, external drive or other media.

Laptop? Hard drive is definitely dying.

You know, you're not supposed to move a laptop much while it's on, even if it says it's "portable"...

You can modify the registry to never chkdsk a volume, but chkdsk only runs if the dirty bit on the volume is set, and this does not get set lightly. I would say that bypassing chkdsk and backing up your data would be the first thing I would do in this scenario, then I'd probably reinstall the OS and see if the issue continues on the new build.

Ok thanks for the help. I guess I'll let it run (now up to around 400,000). But what if it is still running after a couple more days? How many files could possibly be "orphaned"?

wow, you're prepared to wait days for chkdsk to finish?? I get worried when I wait more than 10 - 15 minutes... apart from what has already been said --- you need to establish a hardware checking routine --- anytime you experience weirdness from your system, especially if it looks hardware related, you need to run your standard tests. Check the hard disk for bad sectors, do a RAM test, and so on. I use a variety of tools, but the first one I go for is the Ultimate Unattended Boot CD v3.4 which has all the tools I generally need.

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

Low-level surface scanner. Will identify dying sectors (and correct them, although this will cause data loss -- backup!)