A Dirty Volume?

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by puff-m-d, Nov 13, 2004.

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  1. puff-m-d

    puff-m-d Registered Member

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    :D Bet ya I got all of you wondering on this one ;) !!!

    I usually do a boot time defrag after I have done a few software installs and/or uninstalls. I usually clean all my temps and caches out first, do a registry clean up, and then a regular defrag. I will then defrag my registry and then schedule both a CHKDSK and boot time defrag for the next reboot. It seems seems that every single time that I do the CHKDSK it says I have a "dirty volume", then goes ahead and checks the disk. If there were any problems, it does not list any or anything that was fixed.

    Now the questions:
    What exactly is a "dirty volume"?
    What problems can a "dirty volume" cause?
    What can I do to prevent a "dirty volume"?
    If CHKDSK is not fixing it, what can I do to fix it?

    Any ideas anyone?
     
    puff-m-d, Nov 13, 2004
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  2. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

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    You know, I've never seen that on a PC myself. On large scale systems, when the operating system would mount a disk it set a flag that basically meant Hey this disk is mounted for write access. If the system crashed before the disk was properly dismounted, that flag remained so the next time the disk was mounted, the OS would know that there were likely to be corrupted files, bad headers, invalid filesizes, etc. - so it would recommend an immediate repair (like a Windows CHKDSK) once it saw that flag at mount time.

    If you run two CHKDSKs in a row, does the second one also show a problem? Or, are you saying it only happens after a reboot / some reboots? If only after reboot, I'd say that the disk is not being properly closed at shutdown. Perhaps a fast shutdown action is halting the system prior to the write cache being flushed to the disk?
     
    LowWaterMark, Nov 13, 2004
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  3. puff-m-d

    puff-m-d Registered Member

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    Well, I have tried changing numerous actions that happen at shutdown to no avail. And as I was doing this I tried many back to back CHKDSK. The volume was alway dirty. So after two or more back to back CHKDSK the dirty volume still hangs around. How do I solve this now. Do I need to change something at shutdown so the disk will have time to finish its writings? I was even clearing the page file at shutdown and now have stopped doing that to see if it would help. No. I was having hung processes and apps auto end on time out but I stopped that to so hopefully everything is shutting down properly. Is there a "fast shutdown option" somewhere I need to disable? I think I am stabbing in the dark now, but from the lack of response except for you Mike, must not be a lot of knowledge of this type of thing floating around out there.
     
    puff-m-d, Nov 14, 2004
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  4. bch

    bch Registered Member

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    To check what your shutdown settings are :

    1. Go to Start/Run and type Regedit
    2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CURRENT CONTROL SET/CONTROL
    3. Click on "Control folder"
    4. Select "Wait to kill service timeout"
    5. The default setting is 20000, I believe, which is 20 seconds
    6. Check yours as on some machines it is set to 2000, which is 2 seconds
    7. To change, right click and select "Modify"
    8. Set the value to 20000.

    Some computers have a setting of 200 to enable a quick shutdown so its a case of each to his own and, I suppose, the software installed.

    Also, when you look in Event Viewer, is it showing errors at the time of shutdown? An Event ID might throw some light.

    I can't pretend to know anything about this particular dirty volume problem, other than what I've read on google, but I hope the above helps.
     
    bch, Nov 14, 2004
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