How to RESET "dirty bit" for NTFS volume

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ralf Baumhoefer
  • Start date Start date
R

Ralf Baumhoefer

Last night the shutdown for my comp went wrong. No idea why.
After some struggle ("booting safe") i managed to make it boot again.

But EVERTY TIME it boots, my comp keeps rumning chkdsk on drives C: and I:
(both NTFS)
Running chkntfs.exe XP claims that both dirty bits for the volumes were set.

I managed to fix this for I: ,running chkdsk I: /F.
But sadly enough, this doesn't work for system volumes like C:

With fsutil.exe you're able to SET the dirty bit for a volume, but not to
RESET it !?

I could of course use "ntfschk c: /X" to stop this, but is this the only
solution ??

Is there a possibility to reset the "dirty bit" for volume c: (in the
registry??).

TIA
 
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:

Brian
 
Brian said:
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:

Brian
Click to expand...

I would NOT do this if the FS has errors, they need to be corrected
BEFORE doing any partition re-sizing operations, besides you cannot
re-size a partition natively in Windows.

Steve
 
Ralf said:
Last night the shutdown for my comp went wrong. No idea why.
After some struggle ("booting safe") i managed to make it boot again.

But EVERTY TIME it boots, my comp keeps rumning chkdsk on drives C: and I:
(both NTFS)
Running chkntfs.exe XP claims that both dirty bits for the volumes were set.

I managed to fix this for I: ,running chkdsk I: /F.
But sadly enough, this doesn't work for system volumes like C:

With fsutil.exe you're able to SET the dirty bit for a volume, but not to
RESET it !?

I could of course use "ntfschk c: /X" to stop this, but is this the only
solution ??

Is there a possibility to reset the "dirty bit" for volume c: (in the
registry??).

TIA
Click to expand...

The dirty bit is not set in the registry, it's part of the file system.
Why does CHKDSK /F not work on the system drive? Did you tell it to run
the check on next restart?

Steve
 
Steve N. said:
The dirty bit is not set in the registry, it's part of the file system.
Why does CHKDSK /F not work on the system drive? Did you tell it to run
the check on next restart?

Steve
Click to expand...
2 Steve: Yes it runs on next start, but i doesn't correct the problem.
It always (like Norton Disc Doctor) says, that drive c: is fine, but
it NEVER resets the dirty bit flag, like it did on drive I:
No idea why that is.
I even installed a recovery console, to start chkdsk from there.
But that didn't help either.
Dirty bit is STILL set.
 
Ralf said:
2 Steve: Yes it runs on next start, but i doesn't correct the problem.
It always (like Norton Disc Doctor) says, that drive c: is fine, but
it NEVER resets the dirty bit flag, like it did on drive I:
No idea why that is.
I even installed a recovery console, to start chkdsk from there.
But that didn't help either.
Dirty bit is STILL set.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I can't find any other way to reset the dirty bit besides
CHKDSK /F (or CHKDSK /P from Recovery Console), however if it was me I'd
run CHKDSK /R to check for bad sectors just in case.

Steve
 
It is possible that your PC does not shutdown properly. It may crash during
the shutdown process without producing the blue screen, thus causing the
volumes to be dirty.
 
Steve N. said:
I'm sorry, I can't find any other way to reset the dirty bit besides
CHKDSK /F (or CHKDSK /P from Recovery Console), however if it was me I'd
run CHKDSK /R to check for bad sectors just in case.

Steve
Click to expand...
Did that (CHKDSK /R). No result. No Fix.
 
Ralf said:
Did that (CHKDSK /R). No result. No Fix.
Click to expand...

Dang. I wish I knew some other possible solution for you besides blowing
away the partition and starting clean.

Have you tried Brian K's suggestion about using PM?

Steve
 
Back
Top