Determine your Hard Drive Letter

• 1). Click the "Start" button on the Windows taskbar and choose "My Computer" from the menu.
  
  
• 2). View the disc listed under "Hard Disc Drives" and write down the hard drive letter assigned to it. By default, the drive letter should be "C," and is usually named "local disk."
  
  
• 3). Write down each hard drive letter listed if you have more than one hard drive or hard drive partition.
  
  

Turning off the Chkdsk on Startup

• 1). Click the "Start" button on the Windows taskbar and choose "Run" from the menu. A small box will pop up.
  
  
• 2). Type "cmd" in the run box and press the enter key. This will open a black DOS screen. This DOS screen will also give you the letter of your main hard drive. This will be the first letter followed by the colon in the title of the window.
  
  
• 3). Type "fsutil dirty query c:" and press the enter key to check if your hard drive is dirty. If your hard drive letter is not "C," you will have to change the "C" in the above command to the letter that matches your drive. This should alert you if your drive is dirty. If you have more than one hard drive or partition, run the query on each hard drive letter.
  
  
• 4). Type "CHKNTFS /X C:" and press the enter key to command Windows to not run a chkdsk on the C drive the next time your computer boots up. Only do this for a drive that was reported to be dirty in the previous query. Again, if your hard drive letter is not "C," you will have to change the "C" in the above command to the letter that matches your drive. If you have more than one drive or partition that was reported to be dirty, repeat the above command for each hard drive letter.
  
  
• 5). Reboot your computer. Windows should boot up without running a chkdsk.
  
  

Cleaning a Dirty Hard Drive

• 1). Click the "Start" button on the Windows taskbar and choose "Run" from the menu. A small box will pop up.
  
  
• 2). Type "cmd" in the run box. This will open a black DOS screen.
  
  
• 3). Type "Chkdsk /f /r c:" in the DOS screen and press "Enter." This will execute a scan of the hard drive and fix any errors on the disc. If your hard drive letter is not "C," you will have to change the "C" in the above command to the letter that matches your drive. If you have more than one dirty hard drive or partition, run the scan on each hard drive letter.
  
  
• 4). Finally, type "fsutil dirty query c:" and press the enter key to ensure that the hard drive has been cleaned. If your hard drive letter is not "C," you will have to change the "C" in the above command to the letter that matches your drive. If you cleaned more than one dirty hard drive or partition, type the command above to check each hard drive letter.