I've noticed that chkdsk /f corrupts AutoCAD installations (or at least Land and Civil 3D)

[Anonymous]

For several years (at least since 2006), every so often our Land Desktop and
Civil 3D installations would be corrupted.

Many of the Map, Land, and Civil 3D features failed with typical error
messages something like these:
"...acmap.arx is not a valid arx file." (repeated with several Autodesk arx
files, often when demand-loading).
"Unable to open database"
"Land Development Desktop is not enabled."

Last month I noticed a pattern, and today I isolated the problem to being
caused by chkdsk /f.

I had periodically scheduled chkdsk ever since we had several drives die
without warning several years ago. I guess I won't be doing that anymore...

I was able to fix our Land and Civil 3D installations by using the "repair
registry" option for each application in the "Add/Remove Programs" control
panel applet.

I don't understand why chkdsk would corrupt the registry according to Land
or Civil 3D without affecting any other programs, but the behaviour was
consistent on 3 computers last month and again this month. I've only seen
these particular symptoms on systems where I've run chkdsk. It doesn't
always break the Autodesk installations, but is frequent enough to be a
problem.

For now, I'm going to forego forcing chkdsk. Hopefully this warning will
help save someone else from the same aggravation.

[Anonymous]

Oops. I just checked the batch file. The command is "chkdsk /r". That's
what seemed to cause the problems.


"Aaron Lance" wrote in message
news:6017717@discussion.autodesk.com...
For several years (at least since 2006), every so often our Land Desktop and
Civil 3D installations would be corrupted.

Many of the Map, Land, and Civil 3D features failed with typical error
messages something like these:
"...acmap.arx is not a valid arx file." (repeated with several Autodesk arx
files, often when demand-loading).
"Unable to open database"
"Land Development Desktop is not enabled."

Last month I noticed a pattern, and today I isolated the problem to being
caused by chkdsk /f.

I had periodically scheduled chkdsk ever since we had several drives die
without warning several years ago. I guess I won't be doing that anymore...

I was able to fix our Land and Civil 3D installations by using the "repair
registry" option for each application in the "Add/Remove Programs" control
panel applet.

I don't understand why chkdsk would corrupt the registry according to Land
or Civil 3D without affecting any other programs, but the behaviour was
consistent on 3 computers last month and again this month. I've only seen
these particular symptoms on systems where I've run chkdsk. It doesn't
always break the Autodesk installations, but is frequent enough to be a
problem.

For now, I'm going to forego forcing chkdsk. Hopefully this warning will
help save someone else from the same aggravation.