What if the Dirty Bit won't go away ??
More than a few people have encountered this:
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a drive partition has the dirty bit set
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so when they reboot, Windows insists on running Autochk to check a drive - it checks the drive and all is well. Just running that check is supposed to clear the dirty bit
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but the next time they reboot, again Windows checks the drive !! Again, all is well and the drive reports no errors
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they get into Windows and run "fsutil dirty query driver_letter:" and they are told that the dirty bit is set
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they try booting with a WinXP CD and go into "Repair" mode to run chkdsk /r (supposed to do a thorough check and also check the surface) - but it does not help
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and so on . . . and so on . . .
There is no apparent way for them to clear the dirty bit. Microsoft has never released the location of the dirty bit, so they are stuck. Here is the only way to fix the problem:
Method 1) if the drive in question is not your boot drive goto Start/Run . . . msconfig, click the "Starup" tab, and uncheck all items. Then reboot, hit CTRL-Alt-Delete to get into Windows Task Manager, and shut down as many tasks as possible. The point here is to free up your drive. Then Start/Run . . . cmd
If it completes successfully this will usually remove the dirty bit. To check it, enter the following command:
fsutil dirty query drive:
reboot to test
Method 2) run Kelly's reg edits to first
Disable autochk from running upon reboot, then reboot, and run this reg file to or
re-enable disk checking upon reboot - this will refresh the entries in your registry to make sure thewy are correct
Method 2) run Partition Magic - try resizing the C: partition a little smaller, create another partition
from the unallocated space, then delete this partition and reclaim the space
back into C:
Method 3) if all else fails - this WILL WORK !! move all the files off the drive, reformat the drive, and then move the files back