CheckDisk

HOWTO:

Limit RAM Usage

While it is not recommended that you continue using a system while you are running Check Disk there will of course be times when it is unavoidable. If you are running a 64bit version of Windows and run Check Disk you will find that all available memory is used up by the programme which of course will slow the machine to a crawl. This is because the 64bit version of Check Disk is 'designed' to do so, while the 32bit version will only consume a maximum of 4GB.

So instead of running the following in the command prompt:

chkdsk # this effectively runs C:\Windows\System32\chkdsk.exe

Instead run this:

C:\Windows\SysWow64\chkdsk.exe

All the relevant command line switch work as normal with the 32bit version.

View Log Files

Check Disk logs can be viewed using the Event Viewer in Windows.

However Check Disk only creates a readable log if it is run from inside Windows, so if you run it at system start up no log file.

So run Check Disk in Windows (if it is the only drive or the drive the OS is running on) to determine is there is an error, then set it to run at start up to correct any errors.

Open Event Viewer:

Event Viewer (Local) | Windows Logs | Application

Right click on Application and click on 'Find' in the resulting menu

Thanks to Seven Forums.