Hi, very obvious question this so please forgive my ignorance. I would just like to know whether chkdsk is always for hardware issues. Last week for no apparent reason, all I could get when starting my Dell desktop was a blue screen with an error message. I rang Dell since I had paid for a three year repair warranty, and after running chkdsk /p unsuccessfully they said it wasn't a hardware issue, so I had to pay £42 because it was a software issue. They then gave me exactly the same instructions, but to type in chkdsk /r instead, and this time it worked. I was suspicious of the similarity of instructions and after looking on the web, it seems that chkdsk is for the physical drive. Surely that means hardware ??
Thanks v much for any help.

How to perform disk error checking in Windows XP

Chkdsk (Chkdsk.exe) is a command-line tool that checks volumes for problems. The tool then tries to repair any that it finds. For example, Chkdsk can repair problems related to bad sectors, lost clusters, cross-linked files, and directory errors.

The flag /p which is a "no flag" and not even suggested anymore checks the disk and reports but does nothing else. /f implies /p but also fixes what if finds. /r implies /f /p but also identifies and remaps bad sectors during the course of normal operations, it is usually not necessary to use the /r parameter unless you suspect that a disk has bad sectors.

Whether this is hardware or software?

That's a good question. I would say both if you define software as pure data.

For anyone to charge you 2 cents to type /r is absurd.

Well, chkdsk is software, but it is used to check hard disks. I think you got ripped off