Windows – Disk consistency check hangs – Windows XP

Whenever I turn on my PC I get a warning that the “system disks must be checked for consistency”. When it starts it goes through step 1 of 3 fine, but when it gets to step 2 (verifying indexes) just stays at 0%. I’ve tried leaving for 10 minutes or so and it never moves. In the end I just have to reboot and skip the consistency check.

I get exactly the same problem when I run chkdsk manually from a command prompt. Step 1 is fine, but step 2 just stays at 0%

I know how to disable the boot time check (with chkntfs), but I don't really want to do that, I would like it to check the disk and make sure everything is ok.

Can anything be done?

[Windows XP, SP3]

Update

I left chkdsk running at the command prompt and after 10 minutes it actually did something:

C:\>chkdsk
The type of the file system is NTFS.

WARNING!  F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
Deleting an index entry from index $O of file 25.
An unspecified error occurred.

The "Deleting" messages appeared slowly one by one over the next few minutes, then suddenly the last 6-8 all appeared together, then it stopped with the always helpful "unspecified error". Stage 3 was never run. There is nothing in the event log.

Update 2

I came back to this issue few days ago. Having backed everything up I decided to leave the scan running overnight. When I checked it the next morning it was waiting at the login screen. I rebooted to see what happened and it now boots fine with no warnings. Perhaps, given long enough, chkdsk was able to sort it all out.