[Cardinal]

Hi all.

I'll get straight to it. I have an error on my hdd that Windows 2k can not seem to repair. The error appears to be one particular file that I can not delete for some reason. I am using the NTFS file system on this drive. When I run chkdsk /f and the pc reboots and begins to scan the drive I receive this message during the checking process.

deleting index entry bootex.log in index $130 of file 5

It then finished the check, and reports that windows has made corrections to the file system and please wait while the system now restarts. Then the hard drive works ferociously for a few seconds, then nothing. My pc appears to hang. I left the pc for 12 hours while I slept hoping it would eventually reboot. But it just sits there at the chkdsk prompt. So I manually restart, get into Windows without any problems and notice that this file is still there.


If I try to delete the file manually, i.e in explorer or even with the DEL command at a dos prompt I receive this message.


I have tried Norton Disk Doctor but that is useless. It just says there is an error in the Indexing portion of my drive but it can not repair it without a reboot.

Can anyone shed any light into this annoying problem?

Regards,

Card.

[Nemesis]

Cardinal,

Try running checkdisk again with the addition of the /r parameter:

chkdsk /f /r

The /r parameter: "Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information. The disk must be locked."

So it will run a boot time.

Out of curiosity, can you rename the file?

[Cardinal]

Well, to answer your question, I could not rename the file. I received the same message, (the file is corrupt and unreadable)when I tried this. After reading up on all the available information in the Microsoft Knowledge Base about it; or rather on the error message I was receiving, I found out that I could only run the chkdsk command with the /f switch and it should of fixed it. Needless to say that did not work. I came to the conclusion with the help of some web sites I found through a google search, that I had a corrupt MFT. The Master File Table that was 22meg on my hard drive appeared to have an error in it when relating to this file. Anyway, Microsoft do not admit to the possibility of this happening so I couldn't find a fix other then to format.

It's worth noting a few things.

The program Inoculate IT was somehow related to this bootex.log.

This problem started after a FAT32 to NTFS conversion using convert.exe from a command prompt.

I'm just writing this down to let the few people who are interested know, that there is a potential problem somewhere in the usage of the MFT with NTFS 5.

I am now using FAT32 again regretably.


Cardinal.

[Ralf Hutter]

If you had to reformat why didn't you go with NTFS during the fresh install? There shouldn't have been any issues with Inoculate IT 'cause you weren't converting from FAT32 to NTFS AND you would have started off with a better file system. Sorry NT Compatible couldn't help but, apparently no one else could either.

[Wolf87]

Use of Partition Magic 6 to first delete and then to create a new partition and format it to NTFS cleans up any HD problem prior to installation. Too many programs try to write to the master boot record.