Logical errors are typically defined as software-level problems with a filesystem (or its metadata) as a result of prior software malfunction (e.g. crashes) or irregular use (e.g. hard resets).

[4] [5] The CHKDSK command was first implemented in 1980 by Tim Paterson and included in Seattle Computer Products 86-DOS.

[12][13] On Windows NT family, a standard CHKDSK scan consists of three phases of testing file metadata.

The same applies to surface scan—this test, which could be extremely time-consuming on large or low-performance disks, is not carried out unless explicitly requested.

During the Windows start-up, a special version of CHKDSK called Autochk (a native mode application) is started by the SMSS.EXE and checks and attempts repairing the file system if the dirty bit is set.

In the event that the problem is grave and a full scan is required, Action Center notifies the user to take the volume offline at the first convenience.

[17][18] Criticism has been aimed at the tendency of AUTOCHK to automatically modify the file system when not explicitly solicited by the user who may wish to back up their data in prior, as an attempted repair may scramble, undermine and disown file and directory paths, especially on a multiboot installation where multiple operating systems may have interferingly written to the same partition.

Randall C. Kennedy of InfoWorld attributed the original report to "various Web sources" and said that in his tests, the memory consumption reached above 90%, although he did not experience a crash.

Nevertheless, Kennedy took the memory consumption for a critical bug that would derail Windows 7's launch and chastised Microsoft.