The recent Windows 10 patch update rolled out on 10 December 2020 has unintentionally introduced a potentially dangerous bug to CHKDSK.
For those who don’t know, CHKDSK is an integrated system file checking utility. Users can run the utility using the command prompt to scan their file system for corrupt or bad data. The files are checked and fixed based on a series of parameters.
However, the recent patch update has made the tool dangerous to run. Many users have reported that running the CHKDSK utility with repair function can cause a blue screen error that carries the stop code NTFS FILE SYSTEM, indicating an error with the file system.
According to the BornCity blog,
The affected person was able to observe this on seven computers with Windows 10 20H2. When analyzing the affected disks (SSDs) on a working system, it could be determined that the logical Windows drive on the disk was detected only as a RAW partition. The /f option of chkdsk probably destroyed the NTFS file system.
The bug will affect any Windows 10 machine running the latest version of the operating system, 20H2. Hence, for the time being, all Windows 10 users should refrain from using CHKDSK. If you must run CHKDSK for any reason, you should strongly consider making a system backup before proceeding.
Microsoft has not yet commented on the matter. However, we are sure that a fix is in the works.
