Volume is Dirty

[lorric]

Suddenly now my PC wont boot beyond Windows XP logo. Either it stays there loading Windows or it tries to go beyond and ends up with a Blue Screen on Death (BSOD) with this error message given in it "Volume is Dirty". I have 2 hard drives installed in my PC. One is the primary and the other secondary. If I remove the secondary hard drive, windows will boot normally and loads fine. But if it is attached, I get this BSOD. Does this mean that my hard drive has got corrupted? I eagerly need back this hard drive because this is the drive on which all of my data is stored. The primary hard drive is mainly used for OS & programs installation and not much stuff is stored on that drive. Is there a easy solution for this?

[SalVatore]

There are maybe two problems:

1. Your partitions that hold the data is broken or dirty that needed to be replace. There is a setup that should fixes it but I forgot. You could look in the System Utility that is on the Windows XP disc when booting on it. When you are in the System Utility, type in "Help" and press Enter for selection. Look for something that can fix partition. MBR is not a good selection so avoid it unless you want to take risk.
   
   
2. Hard drive is failing. You will need to replace it.

[Lillebror]

Set the computer to start from CD.

Start with the Windows CD in the CD drive. You will come to a screen that asks about installing windows, or entering the repair console. Enter the repair console. Read the screen carefully, if you hit enter instead of 1 it will start all over again. 1 should be your windows installation.

Type chkdsk /p

It will check the drive for errors and bad system files.

When done just type "exit", and restart.

[Calvin K]

What you're experiencing is what Windows refers to as "setting the dirty bit" and what you have to do is unset that bit. Every time Windows XP starts, autochk.exe is called by the kernel to scan all volumes to check if the volume dirty bit is set. If the dirty bit is set, autochk performs an immediate chkdsk /f on that volume. Chkdsk /f verifies file system integrity and attempts to fix any problems with the volume. It is usually caused by a hard shut down or a power loss during a read-right operation on that particular drive.

[MrChris-]

If a volume's dirty bit is set, this indicates that the file system may be in an inconsistent state. The dirty bit can be set because the volume is online and has outstanding changes, because changes were made to the volume and the computer shutdown before the changes were committed to disk, or because corruption was detected on the volume. If the dirty bit is set when the computer restarts, chkdsk runs to verify the consistency of the volume.

When Autochk runs against a volume at boot time it records its output to a file called Bootex.log in the root of the volume being checked. The Winlogon service then moves the contents of each Bootex.log file to the Application Event log. One event log message for each volume checked is recorded. So check the application event log.

[lorric]

I tried placing the Windows CD in and booting the computer, when the choice screen finally came up, I selected "boot from last known good configuration" but it didn't help. I'm guessing it might actually be a hardware problem on his machine?

[Calvin K]

Well, to fix that is easy. First click Start -> Run -> bring up a command prompt by typing in "CMD" and type " fsutil dirty query d: ". This queries the drive, and more than likely it will tell you that it is dirty. Next, type "CHKNTFS /X D:". The X tells Windows to NOT check that particular drive on the next reboot. At this time, manually reboot your computer, it should not do a Chkdsk and take you directly to Windows.

Once Windows has fully loaded, bring up another CMD prompt and type and now you want to do a Chkdsk manually by typing "Chkdsk /f /r d:". This should take you through 5 stages of the scan and will unset that dirty bit. Finally, type "fsutil dirty query d:" and Windows will confirm that the dirty bit is not set on that drive. Good luck!

[Calvin K]

Well, to fix that is easy. First click Start -> Run -> bring up a command prompt by typing in "CMD" and type " fsutil dirty query d: ". This queries the drive, and more than likely it will tell you that it is dirty. Next, type "CHKNTFS /X D:". The X tells Windows to NOT check that particular drive on the next reboot. At this time, manually reboot your computer, it should not do a Chkdsk and take you directly to Windows.

Once Windows has fully loaded, bring up another CMD prompt and type and now you want to do a Chkdsk manually by typing "Chkdsk /f /r d:". This should take you through 5 stages of the scan and will unset that dirty bit. Finally, type "fsutil dirty query d:" and Windows will confirm that the dirty bit is not set on that drive. Good luck!