The solution I used was not a clean fix, but it seemed to work. The problem occurred on a computer with Partition Magic 8 and Windows XP installed, and started after I use partition magic to create partition on a new disk.
To fix the problem, I deleted the bootExecute key at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager" in the registry.
After the deletion (and subsquent reboot), I get a new error -- "\SystemRoot\windows\System32\AutoChk.exe program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK".
According to the post at http://tipsfromgeek.com/2008/09/autochk-not-found-skipping-autocheck.html , I was able to fix this new error by adding the following registry keys. I added the keys by creating a text file with the ".reg" extension and double click it to import.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager]
"AutoChkTimeOut"=dword:0000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager]
"BootExecute"=hex(7):61,00,75,00,74,00,6f,00,63,00,68,00,65,00,63,00,6b,00,20,\
00,61,00,75,00,74,00,6f,00,63,00,68,00,6b,00,20,00,2a,00,00,00,00,00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"SFCScan"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\cleanuppath]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,63,00,6c,00,\
65,00,61,00,6e,00,6d,00,67,00,72,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,20,00,2f,00,44,\
00,20,00,25,00,63,00,00,00
Note that the bookExecute key was created again. So I wonder if I should have replaced the BootExecute key with something else instead of deleting it to avoid getting the second error. I also wonder if some of the other registry keys clear the autocheck at start up. The hex numbers makes the input a bit mysterious. In the form humans like myself can read:
AutoChkTimeOut, REG_DWORD, 0
BootExecute, REG_MULTI_SZ,autocheck autochk *
SFCScan, REG_DWORD, 0
, REG_EXPAND_SZ, %SystemRoot%\system32\cleanmgr.exe /D %c