win7-64 issue -- dirty bits

[burninbush]

I have a problem here with a recent win7-64 install on one of my multi-boot desktops. At every w7 boot, it always finds that the several fat32 partitions [on 2 drives in that machine] need to be checked. NEVER finds any problem when I let it check all 5 of my fat32 partitions so I have begun to skip checking to avoid the time delay.

 

My first experience with w7 on this machine -- is this native behavior, or am I doing something wrong? To be clear, I see this even if I have not touched any of the vfat parts on the machine, at the next w7 boot it'll find that the vfat parts need to be checked.

 

Summary ... do a boot to w7, let it check all the vfat parts, then immediately do a proper Start menu shutdown, then power up again, boot to w7 -- and it'll want to check all 5 vfat parts. Never once has it found a problem.

 

TIA for any solution.

[jcgriff2]

Hi -

 

I'd like system info -- these 2 would be fine to start with, please:

 

msinfo32

START | type msinfo32 in Start Search box | Click on msinfo32 | save as an NFO file (default file ext)

 

System Health Report

START | type perfmon /report | save as HTML file

 

Zip up and upload to Sky Drive - https://skydrive.live.com/

 

Regards. . .

 

jcgriff2

[goretsky]

Hello,

 

Does the hard disk drive in question test okay with the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic software?

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

[burninbush]

Well, I may be past this problem, at least it isn't asking to check the drives again. Not clear what I did to fix it. @ Temmu, I tried the chkdsk routine to disable checking, to no effect, w7 still wanted to check the drives.

 

One of the drives it was wanting to check every time turned out to be a 'virtual cd' emulator that I had left running at some previous time; "MagicDisc", an app that I used to run on XP. So, killed that with task manager. Thirteen partitions on this machine, I don't try to remember what win7 names apply to which.

 

And then while idly staring at the Explorer display I right-clicked on a drive, Properties, and then on the screen that appeared under Tools I saw the 'check for errors' button, clicked that -- which must do something that the startup check doesn't do; on one of my drives that I had let the startup check run on multiple times just this morning, no problem found, it found 46 errors in one directory of html files, all "minor error in filename" -- perhaps impermissible characters? (I have gigs of saved html from my news scanning)

 

And after doing that routine on every partition the problem appears gone, I can reboot and it doesn't want to check any drives at startup. Only found errors on the one partition as noted above.

 

This machine is 99% used for linux; it has been my theory that the dirty-bit issue was from something linux is doing/ not doing to these vfat partitions. Seems possible that permissible filename chars under linux would differ from what w7 allows.

 

For others who asked, SMART is enabled on both drives, apparently neither has ever made an error. I'll try the manufacturer's read-only diags one of these nights -- these are a 1 TB and a 320 gb drives, running the diag will take some time.

[sunrat]

I get the same chdsk behaviour for an old 320GB HD with 2 fat partitions in my PC. Sometimes, but not every time it boots Win7 it will want to run chdsk on the drive but to date has not found any errors.

Mind you that SMART has been reporting IMMINENT FAILURE for this drive for about 2 years! It only contains data, mainly music, which is backed up to an external HD. I'm just leaving it in there to see how long it takes to be FUBAR.