Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Posted on November 16th, 2009 by Barry Collins
The Windows 7 chkdsk bug that won’t go away
Back in August, I told you how two of us in the PC Pro office had been struck down with an irritating Windows 7 chkdsk bug. The fault saw the check disk utility spring into life every sodding time Stuart Turton and I booted our PCs, yet report a clean bill of health once it had completed its laborious scan.
CLICK HERE FOR THE LATEST NEWS OF THE WINDOWS 7 CHKDSK BUG’S LINK TO ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE
Well, it appears the problem isn’t going away. A recent flurry of comments on the August blog reveals that the chkdsk flaw isn’t restricted to the beta software we were running at the time. The problem appears to be afflicting users of the final Windows 7 code, and in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours. A number of people leaving comments on both our blog and the various web forums discussing the issue pointed the finger at Avira’s free antivirus software (which both Stuart Turton and I were running), but there’s a groundswell of non-Avira users reporting the issue too, so that appears to be a case of mistaken identity.
I no longer have the problem – but only because a cataclysmic hard disk failure forced me to swap out my laptop’s drive (which I hope and suspect was entirely unrelated). That’s put the fear of God into poor Stuart, who’s now become a PC hypochondriac, convinced his hard disk is about to keel over any second.
Microsoft, meanwhile, appears to have found a head-sized hole in the sand. Despite the countless reports of the issue on internet forums, the software giant has yet to acknowledge the bug on its official Support site. PC Pro readers who’ve contacted Microsoft directly claim they’ve been told to simply disable chkdsk, which rather reminds me of the Tommy Cooper gag where he complains to the doctor that “it hurts when I do this” and the doctor replies: “don’t do that, then”.
We’ve asked Microsoft’s press wallahs to find out whether the chkdsk bug is a known issue that’s likely to be addressed soon. We’ll let you know the outcome. But if anyone’s got any theories on what’s causing this ridiculous bug, feel free to elaborate on the comments below.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
19 Responses to “ The Windows 7 chkdsk bug that won’t go away ”
Leave a Reply
Authors
- Barry Collins
- Chris Brennan
- Christine Horton
- Darien Graham-Smith
- Dave Stevenson
- Davey Winder
- David Bayon
- David Fearon
- Ewen Rankin
- Ian Devlin
- Jon Honeyball
- Jonathan Bray
- Kevin Partner
- Mike Jennings
- Nicole Kobie
- Sasha Muller
- Steve Cassidy
- Stewart Mitchell
- Stuart Turton
- Tim Danton
- Tom Arah
Categories
- About the bloggers
- Android App of the Week
- cloud computing
- Green
- Hardware
- How To
- iPhone App of the Week
- Just in
- Microsoft Office 2010
- Newsdesk
- Online business
- Random
- Rant
- Real World Computing
- Software
- View from the Labs
- Windows 7
- Windows 8
Archives
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
advertisement
November 16th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
This is a really, really old one!….
Just google “Unsetting the dirty bit” for the solution……..
November 16th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
That’s because it’s checking your desk not your disk (Your second sentence) Sorry
))
November 16th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I’ll put that one down to a spellchk bug!
Now corrected.
Barry Collins
Online Editor
November 16th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
In case you were unsure of my first comment.
The following will solve the issue.
Start – All Programs – Accessories
Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator.
Type fsutil dirty query c: and press ENTER (this assumes that the O/S drive is C:)
If the result = DIRTY then type the following….
CHKNTFS /X C: and then press ENTER
Reboot the PC. Windows should boot normally instead of running the check.
Reopen the Administrator Command Prompt.
chkdsk /f /r c: and press ENTER to run CHKDSK
Type the following when the check has finished
fsutil dirty query c: and press ENTER
The result should now be CLEAN !
Close the Command Prompt
Job done !
November 16th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
I had the problem with the RC, on two different machines, and it’s disappeared on both with the final code. But in the transition I also dropped Avira (both a free and paid for version) and that leaves me thinking it was the cause at least in my case …
November 16th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
You probably have a corrupt entry for Error Checking in the registry. A System Restore point would probably fix that. If you want to look at the entry doing it, it’s at:
‘autocheck’ entry (value) at: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\BootExecute
If you make a restore point, and delete this value, you will probably fix it.
November 17th, 2009 at 5:26 am
At least its not deleting your data on a guest account.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I installed W7 Ent x64 with Avira pro on two seperate machines and only one has the chkdsk error, so doubtful if its caused by Avira.
November 19th, 2009 at 6:52 am
I’ve installed w7 on a whole stack of machines. None of them have Avira installed, none of them have this bug. Hmmm. Don’t know what this proves, but if I were Stuart, I’d consider upgrading my hard disk. After all, it might not be a bug, it might be a predictive failure, just badly engineered by Microsoft, (never seen that before have we?)
November 19th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I clean installed W7 x64 on a brand new Samsung F3 hard drive, and allowed Windows to do it all. No Avira. It’s been happening since day one. I think Avira can’t be the root cause. Got to be a Microsoft bug. I’ve tried every “fix” you can find – none works. I’ve disabled autchkdsk now. Tried to contact support, thinking it would be free, since there’s so much web traffic out there on this, and on Microsoft’s technet, but they want me to pay them. Imagine any other company asking you to pay them to fix a faulty product. Only Microsoft. Hope they wake up to this one soon.
November 26th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
After switching off the autochk facility for a while after becoming frustrated with the chkdsk at reboot issue (see last post), I decided to turn it on again today, and to check to see if the dirty bit was set. It wasn’t. Rebooted a few times – no chkdsk, and no dirty bit. Seemed strange. Had a long look at event viwer, and the associated event 55 hadn’t appeared for a few days. Whilst looking, I noticed the system had disabled my (previously working) Maxtor One Touch 4 plus external drive. Prior to that, an event id 57 (source: ntfs) had repeatedly been logged, indicating a cache could not be flushed and warning that corruption could occur. I’m wondering whether the Maxtor, then, is the problem. I’m no expert, but seems like some suspiciously coincidental events logged. Anyone else got external hard drives, or use any other external storage with their W7 and getting this issue?
December 1st, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I had it for the first time this morning, i have Win7 64bit and Avira installed, so i’ve got that waiting for me to sort out when i get home tonight form work, what joy!
December 19th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I have ESET smart security, and found I got Event ID 55 every time I transferred photos from my camera by USB cable using the default Microsoft picture import. I have for the moment switched to Microsoft Security Essentials, and have not had the problem since.
Seems to be some conflict with Win7 / Antivirus / USB transfer ??
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Well, I thought it had gone away using Microsoft Security Essentials, but it just happened again (when I transfer photos from my camera).
But I must say it happens much less using MSE. Very hard to troubleshoot as I cannot reliably reproduce the problem.
December 24th, 2009 at 12:46 am
I’ve found that problem persisted after all, despite diconnecting external hard drive. However, went on hunt for corrupt files left over after partial restore of files using Acronis. Found quite a few I originally missed, and had to use Trinity Rescue Disc to delete each file and folder manually. Since then, no issues with chkdsk. Hope that’s it! Do have Norton Int Sec 2010 installed, so hope it’s not that.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Since deleting those corrupted and unreadable files left over from Acronis file backup with TRK, no issues with chkdsk, and no error 55 or 57 in event viewer logs, despite plenty of computer use. I think it’s sorted at last, at least on my computer.
December 28th, 2009 at 1:37 am
If chkdsk will not work when you reboot Windows 7!!
BUT THIS TIME I DID MSCONFIG AND CLICKED THE BOOT TAB AND TICKED THE SAFE MODE. THEN SCHEDULED THE DISK CHECK!! THEN RESTARTED THE COMPUTER. HOORAY! IT WENT INTO SAFE MODE THIS TIME IT IS DOING THE CHECK! SOMETHING WAS RUNNING TO PREVENT THE CHKDSK COMMAND FROM WORKING.
**Windows 7 Sony Laptop Vaio VGN-AW290j two 500gb HDD in RAID Stripe**
February 5th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
See http://tinyurl.com/w7corrupt
This related issue is confirmed by Microsoft.
March 21st, 2010 at 12:41 am
I had the problem start after installing microsoft security essentials. I will have to get back to you once I see whether or not the problem persists.