Dirty bit and Windows XP

hi guys,

Maybe someone could shed some light on this...

I have a Windows XP Pro, NTFS. The Dirty bit is always set consequently I cannot defragment using Diskeeper.

I ran Chkdsk with all the imaginable parameters to fix but there is nothing to fix. After booting, I use the fsutil dirty query and C: is dirty again. Chkdsk does not detect any problem and there is no fixing of course.

I desperation, I ran a boottime defragmentation, chkdsk again, no use. I decided to use the good old Norton and ran a disk disgnoses that last for more than 20 hours and could not find a single bad sector. Ran the Scandisk just in case, no errors. Apparently the HD is perfect however, after booting, the bloody thing is set again.

Any suggestion? I'm reluctant at this stage to use Partition Magic to move the whole thing around (someone suggested that this could fix it). Any opinions about this?

Cheers!

 

I defrag with DIRMS

http://www.dirms.com/

You might want to try it out.

 

Thanks Vbmark! I'll try that. However, I'm still curious about the Dirty Bit. I still have no idea why it is being set...

 

FAT or NTFS?

 

As I said above, Windows XP Pro NTFS... Any ideas?

 

Sorry - you certainly had already told us NTFS. I just missed it - reading too fast probably.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316506 would be worth a look.

 

Thanks Newt,

Interesting articles at Microsoft but do not apply to my case. I found out however, that it seems that one of my application may be causing the dirty bit to be set. My PC is connected to a Novell network and I created a small batch file to check the dirty bit. I also disabled a few things in my startup trying to isolate the problem.

After I login, I wait for a few minutes until everything is loaded and check the dirty bit several times. It is not dirty. Then I started to fire up a program at a time and checking again. It seems that a Java program (Infractive, the Help Desk client) may be causing the problem. Not sure yet...

Will keep you posted.

Cheers!

 

Fsutil dirty {query|set} pathname
You do it from the command prompt window

----fsutil Commands Supported ----



behavior Control file system behavior

dirty Manage volume dirty bit

file File specific commands

fsinfo File system information

hardlink Hardlink management

objectid Object ID management

quota Quota management

reparsepoint Reparse point management

sparse Sparse file control

usn USN management

volume Volume management



DIRTY Commands Supported ----



query Query the dirty bit

set Set the dirty bit

 

Hi oshwyn5,

Thanks but I don't really understand what you're suggesting. If you read the original post you'll see that I've done all I could regarding the dirty bit. yes, I use fsutil to do the checking. You can SET but not RESET (and this is good because if one has a real problem with the HDs it is always good to do a check)...

My last reply I did exactly that using "fsutil dirty query c:" to isolate the problem...

Thanks anyway...

 

Did you do
chkdsk C: /f /r /x

 

Thanks oshwyn5!

Yes, I did. The funny thing about this story is that CHKDSK or NTFSCHK never finds anything wrong. No bad sectors, no truncated files, file system clean, no nothing. Around 5 minutes after startup completed, the dirty bit is set. I'm starting to suspect that the RAM is playing up...

The defragmentation during the boot was successful and clean BTW.

My suspicion about the Java program was wrong and I'm still in the dark. Weird, isn't?

Cheers!