Wow is this every misleading Thane. XP is a lot more robust than you make it
out to be. Even with power interupts, that I get quite often being a long
long way north and in a remote community, my XP has suffered no ill effects.
Nor does manual shutdown affect any part of my OS. CHKDSK simply checks your
HDD got disk continuity and for bad sectors and attempts to recover them.
CHKDSK is one of the tools in XP and should be run on the odd occassion to
keep your system humming right along. I generally use it about every three or
four months. Those with problems should perhaps run it in conjunction with
defrag about once a month or more. Weekly wouldn't hurt. If for any reason
chkdsk comes up at the beginning of a boot then simply let it run as some
routine has called for it's activation. There may or may not be anything
wrong but running it will only ensure your system operates at peak
proficiency.
{]:~)