Windows XP Blue Screen CHKDSK Volume is Dirty on Laptop Startup

The Analyst

Hey Folks,

A couple of days ago a blue CHKDSK screen appeared when i started my laptop. It had the following message.

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS
The volume is dirty

It then does the following,

CHKDSK is verifying files (1 of 3)

CHKDSK is verifying indexes (2 of 3)

CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (3 of 3)

CHKDSK is verifying USN journal

It then shows some information (which I think is about the hard drive size and volume on disk etc. but it is too quick to note down). It then proceeds to a normal boot up. The first time this occurred, it appeared to find bad/corrupt files in the indexes step and from what I gather it removed these or fixed them. On a subsequent and every startup since the same blue screen appears but it doesn’t find any problems (from what I gather) and afterwards boots up normally. The laptop works normally apart from this problem.

I did some research online and the suggestions are that it could as a result of an improper shutdown (which isn’t my case) which may have corrupted the system files or it may be the hard drive on the way out.

I followed the steps outlined here

After rebooting CHKDSK screen appeared and did a more comprehensive screen of the hard drive, similar to the screen above. It did this twice and the second time was identical except the ‘volume is dirty’ notice was gone. After completing the steps and restarting the same old CHKDSK screen appeared.

I also downloaded the seagate hard drive software and it found nothing.

I did a virus scan and found nothing (AVG Free ver 9.0). My anti-virus is usually up to date.

Has anyone had a similar problem or have any ideas as to what may be causing this??

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6400
Windows XP professional service pack 3
Intel Core 2 T5600, 1.83Ghz
2GB RAM

JonathanAnon

Sounds like either

a) your hard disk is failing.
or
b) Something is continuously causing your laptop to crash, and this then initiates the CHKDSK to run on reboot. But You say that this is not the case

You say that you have run the Seagate diagnostic tool and it came up with nothing, but in my experience, hard drives tend to be on "good behaviour" when you run diagnostic tools on them. Usually when the hard drive looks like it's failing, it's failing, no matter what the diagnostics say.

I think the first step is to back up everything, while the hard drive is still working. I would do this right now.

The Analyst

JonathanAnon wrote: »

Sounds like either

a) your hard disk is failing.
or
b) Something is continuously causing your laptop to crash, and this then initiates the CHKDSK to run on reboot. But You say that this is not the case

You say that you have run the Seagate diagnostic tool and it came up with nothing, but in my experience, hard drives tend to be on "good behaviour" when you run diagnostic tools on them. Usually when the hard drive looks like it's failing, it's failing, no matter what the diagnostics say.

I think the first step is to back up everything, while the hard drive is still working. I would do this right now.

Thanks for the reply,

I think its the hard drive on the way out myself. I backed eveything up the first time it appeared. I haven't backed up the hard drive itself tho. there's some conflicting stuff about cloning drives etc so i'm just looking around to see what the best option is for backing it up.

If something was continuously crashing it at startup could it be the registry files? I have ERUNT and it runs ERUNT Autobackup.Ink on every startup. There is about one months of autoback up folders saved. If I restored an older registry backup (from before the date this prob starting occuring) could this help? I'm fairly techie but this kinda stuff is getting a bit out of my comfort zone!

I still have all the CD's (OS, drivers, utilities etc) for the laptop so I was thinking of just getting a new (and bigger) hard drive and wiping it and starting from scratch. It has been getting pretty slow lately.