Windows XP "volume bitmap" error -> please try yourself

  • Thread starter Thread starter Florian
  • Start date Start date
F

Florian

I have noticed that every Windows XP installation I have looked at in the
last few days shows the same error in regard to the volume bitmap. If I run
"chkdsk c:" on the system I will see an output similar to this:

Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

This error seems to only affect the system partition but I am not 100% sure
about that. Running "chkdsk /f" including the required reboot has no
affect - the error message will persist.

I have tried this on three machines here (one raid workstation and two
laptops), and on PCs from two friends across the globe. All those computers
are completely unrelated and have different functions. The all have the
EXACT same error that can't be resolved.

It doesn't seem to cause any data loss since it's the volume bitmap, however
I have personally noticed that NTFS with Windows XP is not as reliable as
NTFS on Windows NT and Windows 2000. I constantly had inconsistencies on a
few workstations, including one connected to a UPS that never crashed.
Another workstation never recovered from a boot-time diskepper
defragmentation.

Does anybody else have similar issues - in particular the error message
shown above? Please let me know ... I'd like to investigate that a bit ...


Thanks,

Flo.
 
Sounds like you're running Chkdsk in read-only mode, which is known to show
this error even though no corruption exists. When you schedule Chkdsk to run
at the next reboot, do you still see this problem?
 
about that. Running "chkdsk /f" including the required reboot has no
As I wrote - running chkdsk /f (including reboot) has no effect on any
machine - error message will - as far as I know - never go away.

Is there a document / KB article that describes this issue? Why would chkdsk
show an error message when there is no error message?

Flo.
 
Can you copy in the message in the event log that shows all the output from
Autochk when you ran it with the /f parameter (with reboot)? The Autochk
report is in the application log of the Event Viewer snap-in. Autochk
information is logged by the Winlogon service, so look for entries with
Winlogon listed as the source of the entry.
 
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