whats making my c: drive dirty?

**streetster** · 10-12-2006, 06:32 PM

Hey guys, everytime I boot my computer, it runs chkdsk... this makes a slow bootup even slower.

I've had a look on the web, and it says to run 'fsutil dirty query #:' and then run 'chkdsk /x /f #:' (where # is the drive letter) to fix the problem.

Except that it doesnt, i cant run a chkdsk on my c: drive as windows claims its in use (suprising that!). Scandisk runs, but i cant tick the 'automatically fix file system errors' box for the same reason.

I've just rebooted, and apparently my C: drive is dirty. chkdsk (minus the /f parameter) gives:

Originally Posted by chkdsk

C:\>chkdsk c:
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)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

199133675 KB total disk space.
41143368 KB in 49822 files.
18464 KB in 5282 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
289519 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
157682324 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
49783418 total allocation units on disk.
39420581 allocation units available on disk.

It's only been happening for a couple of days... the only thing i have done to my system in the past few days is run a Windows Update... so I'm assuming that this is the cause of the problems... but has anyone got a solution?

Splash · 10-12-2006, 07:11 PM

Often the cause of this is a drive that's running too hot. What happens if you run chkdsk c: /r ? (it will need to run on reboot) This should fix it.

**streetster** · 10-12-2006, 07:54 PM

the drive is apparently 37 degrees, my other hdd is 42, nothing excessive there

chkdsk *always* runs on startup... just did another 'fsutil dirty query c:' and it says its dirty. arg!

**McClane** · 11-12-2006, 01:27 AM

I don't know if this will help but a few years back I had major issues with my hdd and as far as I remember I had to keep trying to use chkdsk to fix the problem. However, it never seemed to work and every time i booted I had to use chkdsk. Turns out it was some files that had become corrupt on my hdd.

I either fixed it by plugging the hdd in as a slave on another machine and deleting them or (and I think this is more likely) I used a version of linux that was bootable from CD and deleted them that way.

Don't know if that will help but you never know

**streetster** · 11-12-2006, 09:55 AM

I think I will allow it for the next couple of weeks, going to buy a pair of new harddrives soon, so once they're up and running i should be able to chkdsk /f this drive as a slave and sort out whatever is going on with it... grr!

**streetster** · 13-12-2006, 07:40 PM

any ideas? its like chkdsk is doing *nothing*... just ran WD Diagnostics thing, took an hour, and found 0 bad sectors... so it seems to not be related to a duff harddrive, arg its so crap!