Why not let it complete? All computers need a minimum of maintenance. Once it
completes it'll likely be a happy camper.

Or does it stop responding and not progress?

I've waited more than overnight for it to complete..

Imho, it never does.

How long would a disc check on an 80gb drive require? If you estimate
longer, I'll try it.

Seems not like a good selling point, if I have to restart because of an
upgrade and have to come back tomorrow, or the next day, to use the machine.

I should have added, the percentage complete scale never changes.

Then you've got one of two problems:

1) your disk is really hooped and it just hasn't failed yet
2) there's a problem with the check disk executable

Either way it behooves you to investigate further rather than trying to bypass
something that's trying to help your PC.

Google produced this interesting bit:

odzangba.wordpress.com/.../add-possibility-to-skip-forced-disk
-check/

And

odzangba.wordpress.com/.../skip-forced-disk-check-at-boot-on-u
buntu/

I installed a program which does the disk check at shutdown instead of startup.
I think it is called autofsck, and it's in Synaptic.

Thanks for this idea, also. I'll look into it, as well as consider as
another suggested, that the new drive is about to go oops.

A solution:

The notebook is a Toshiba with a P4 at 3gbs +/-.

After umpteen startups and lockups today after an update that required
restart. The escape key would not escape it.

So, just for grins I went into the setup several times. The last time, I
noticed a setting for "2nd Logical Processor." I've noticed some software
that behaves as if the computer has two processors. I set this to disable
and restarted. The disk check ran flawlessly and took less than a minute.

Now testing, BOINC now runs only one instance. So I may change it back, or
not, depending what else I may be able to determine.

Allow the disk check to continue and it will not nag you until after the file
system has been mounted a certain number of times. The Linux file system does
consistency checks at a fixed number. It is for your protection. By
circumventing it you are only bypassing the nag that once. It will want to do
its thing until you give in.

Not meaning to be sarcastic, but how many days will it take? When allowed
to run overnight, it's still at 15% on an 80gb drive that has nothing but
Ubuntu and firefox and SETI on it, About 6gb used.

it should take less than 15 min. folks seem to be missing the fact
that it hangs on you.

esc when the check starts should skip it.

try booting from the livecd and forcing a check from there