Can't defrag one drive...chkdsk scheduled to run...?

I've searched for answers on this here in the Help forums and in the FAQ forums, but wasn't able to find any answers. I apologize if this has been asked and answered in the past and I missed it.

One of my 160gb hds is used as a data drive, not an OS drive. I've been unable to analyze or defrag this drive due to chkdsk apparently being scheduled to run on the drive.

I've done hardware/fitness tests on the drive to see if there's any problem with it to no avail. Everything looks fine regarding that.

I've followed the few instructions at Microsoft such as looking in Scheduled Tasks for autochk or chkdsk. Nothing. Checked the registry for the value of BootExecute and it's already set to autocheck autochk *.

When rebooting, chkdsk will run and I'll let it run without skipping. No errors are ever found. But after every reboot, chkdsk is still scheduled to run.

About the only thing I can think of that I haven't tried yet is getting into Recovery Console to run chkdsk, because I figured doing the fitness tests on the actual drive would be the same, if not better for identifiying any hardware problem in the drive. Am I correct in that assumption?

Does anyone have any suggestions here at all? I'm at a loss. I currently don't have much data on the drive b/c I'm a bit skeptical until I can fix what's going on here and are able to actually analyze or defrag the drive. I must be missing something somewhere.

One thing that may or may not have something to do with it is I have set up a second pagefile on this drive(secondary to the pagefile on C). I doubt this has anything to do with it as I've never had a problem doing this on a secondary drive in the past.

On a side note...Does anyone have any suggestions for a good Drive Management software out there that will work better than the normal Windows Defrag?

 

Try this. Bring up a command prompt and type fsutil dirty query c [if c is the drive concerned]. This queries the drive and should tell you if chkdsk is programmed to run each time. Next, type chkntfs /x c Then manually reboot and hopefully you will load Windows without doing a chkdsk. Once Windows has loaded, bring up a cmd prompt and manually do a chkdsk by typing Chkdsk /f /r c

This should take you through the 5 stages of the scan and unset the instruction to run each time. Then type fsutil dirty query c and Windows should confirm that it is not set on that drive.

 

Interesting. A dirty query, huh? I'll work on it tonight when I get home.

Thanks for the help. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

Worked great. Found 13 bad clusters. Doesn't appear to be any data loss.

Thanks again for the help, armstrong!

 

You're welcome. Glad it did the trick.

 

I am having a similar issue with Windows XP. But these commands do not work. I have an older Dell D600 computer, and I have to upgrade to SP2 for some of my newer items for work. However, due to the dirty c: drive, I can't upgrade anything. I also get the chkdsk at every start up, and it tells me that I have some sectors missing or unreachable. I tried to reinstall windows xp, but obviously that didn't work. Any advice would be great. Thanks in advance.

 

c_mahlosky, would it be worthwhile in the first phases of the boot process to tap F8 a few times to bring up the boot options menu. There, choose DOS / command prompt only. The PC should boot into DOS. Follow Armstrong's advice of Chkdsk /f /r c.