Recurring CHKDSK issue

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 5:26 pm

My computer is a couple of weeks old, and already I am getting the same re-occurring CHKDSK error message that I got on my old computer.

I run CHKDSK, and it tells it it "discovered free space marked as allocated in the master file table (MFT) bitmap". I run CHKDSK/F to no avail. I got this message consistently on my other computer as well. Does anyone know why this is occuring, and if there is a way to actually fix it?

pyogenes · Post by **pyogenes** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 5:41 pm

it's a bug with chkdsk.

look here

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 5:55 pm

So. it's been a known problem since at least 2002, and Microsoft hasn't been able to fix it?

pyogenes · Post by **pyogenes** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:02 pm

I'm not surprised. They probably determined it'd take a lot of hours to figure out exact what is causing the error and fix it. If that's the case, then financially that's not worth the time to fix it since the bug doesn't corrupt data or cause any other problems and it's far more cost-effective to just tell people they can ignore it.

If that's the reason, I can respect that from a business management perspective. From a consumer perspective, I'm really annoyed because I spent hours trying to figure that out a couple years ago....

Arvo · Post by **Arvo** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 8:55 am

pyogenes, I don't think that pointed article refers at this particular problem. I may be wrong of course.

Stephen, I've never seen problems with chkdsk alone - if disk gets repeatedly corrupted, then there is always some hardware or driver (including antivirus "soft" drivers) problem also present. Well, I can agree that your case may be different and can be caused just by chkdsk bug - but let's do little research.

What version and SP of XP you have (eg XP Pro OEM SP2)? With what XP version you formatted the HDD?
If possible, look at your HDD SMART data (SpeedFAN can reveal it) - have you any reallocated sectors on it? (Last number - raw data - is important.)
Look at system event log - are there some disk/disk controller related entries (errors, warnings)?
What motherboard and HDD you've got?
Have you experienced any problems with your PC - restarts, BSODs, freezes, problems with shutting down?
What kind of antivirus are you using?

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:55 pm

Arvo wrote:pyogenes, I don't think that pointed article refers at this particular problem. I may be wrong of course.

Stephen, I've never seen problems with chkdsk alone - if disk gets repeatedly corrupted, then there is always some hardware or driver (including antivirus "soft" drivers) problem also present. Well, I can agree that your case may be different and can be caused just by chkdsk bug - but let's do little research.

What version and SP of XP you have (eg XP Pro OEM SP2)? With what XP version you formatted the HDD?
If possible, look at your HDD SMART data (SpeedFAN can reveal it) - have you any reallocated sectors on it? (Last number - raw data - is important.)
Look at system event log - are there some disk/disk controller related entries (errors, warnings)?
What motherboard and HDD you've got?
Have you experienced any problems with your PC - restarts, BSODs, freezes, problems with shutting down?
What kind of antivirus are you using?

My older computer has XP Home with SP2, but the problems started right off the bat when I had SP1. My new build has XP Home SP2.

I have not had any restarts, BSODs, etc with either computer - other than some issues with my older computer related to some specific driver conflicts that I resolved.

My older computer started with Norton AV and Internet Security. I migrated to NOD 31 AV and Outpost Pro firewall. My new build has Kaspersky Internet Security 6.

My old computer has a P4 875 mobo, while my new build has a BadAxe2. My old computer has a Seagate HDD, while my new one has A WD Raptor.

I haven't checked the SMART data or system event log yet.

Arvo · Post by **Arvo** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 8:54 am

Only common denominator seems XP Home here. Of course you have (had) some common set of sevices and applications running on either PCs - but investigating each one of these would waste much time and most probably we couldn't find your problem cause anyway (windows with its internal cross-dependencies is very complex and nasty system, especially when something goes wrong).

Well, I'm waiting for SMART and eventlog - maybe these reveal something suspicious.

If not, then you have to live with such "minor inconsistencies" - after all, quoted your error doesn't indicate filesystem corruption, it's just that some informational (duplicated) data is somewhat out of sync with real data.

If you'd eager to experiment (of course only when SMART is clean and there are no problems in eventlog), then I'd suggest run your PC without any active AV software for some time - just for testing. Of course you should not disable firewalls and you have to be careful while surfing!

I've seen various problems with many AV packages (including Norton, Kaspersky, F-Secure, F-Prot, NOD32, TrendMicro), usually not directly disk related though. They hook very low-level functions and like every other piece of software (including chkdsk

) are buggy as hell.