Cannot defragment your drive in Windows XP
Problem:
You keep getting an error message when trying to defragment a drive, saying that chkdsk is scheduled to run for a particular disk at the next startup and so defrag cannot run; but chkdsk doesn’t run at startup. It could be possible that the dirty bit is set for that drive and you’re gonna have to follow the steps below to fix it:
Solution:
- Open a command prompt window (START > RUN > type cmd > hit ENTER)
- Type fsutil dirty query c: (if C is the drive that’s not defragmenting)
- This will tell you if the dirty bit is set for that particular drive
- Next type chkntfs /x c:
- Restart your computer
- Open a command prompt window again.
- Type chkdsk /f /r c: to do a manual check of your disk
- Once chkdsk has completed, type fsutil dirty query c: again and it should confirm that the dirty bit is no longer set.
You should, now, be able to defrag your drive!
Additional Notes:
We encountered this problem on an HP laptop a few days ago and fixed it. We’ve not seen this problem too often in the past though.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:41 pm (IST)
Why don’t you post how to get the HP out of the pre-installed Windows which comes on Hp laptops..?? hehe
March 13th, 2007 at 11:53 pm (IST)
will do soon nuff… posting these tips based on what we come across from the time we started this blog.. lettin’ the past go! :p