The Autochk.exe tool in the Windows systems is used to scan and check the system integrity during the startup. This utility is invoked whenever there is some unclean system shutdown. However, if your file system is NTFS partitioned and the hard disk is damaged, then the system may become inaccessible and does not restart. Such disk corruption can occur because of various reasons such as virus infections, abrupt system shutdown, etc. You should try out certain methods to perform NTFS data recovery failing which you must use a third-party NTFS Partition Recovery software.

Let us assume a situation in which you are trying to start your Windows Vista system, which has the release version of Vista. The system does not start displaying a black screen.

Cause:

The most possible cause of this problem is that one of the NTFS volume in the system is corrupt.

What is actually happening here is that the Autochk.exe tool employs different criteria to find out the disk corruption in the system, which is different from the one that NTFS uses. So, when NTFS identifies a volume as corrupted, it is not recognized by the Autochk.exe and marks the volume as clean and restarts the system after that. However, during the system restart it is again marked as corrupted by NTFS system. In this process, the Autochk.exe tool restarts again and the black screen is displayed.

Resolution:

To resolve this situation, you should perform the following steps: