Anyone with Windows XP...

[Aaron]

Go to Start > Run and type CMD

then when the command prompt window appears, type only:

chkdsk c:

(change drive letter to where your OS resides if different from c:\)

Do you get the following messages?

Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

I got this on my maxtor 60gb, thinking it was a bad hard drive, despite running a full chkdsk scan with /F and formatting & reinstalling XP, but I still got that message. I swapped over to a working 120gb Western Digital and I'm still getting the same message.

If you get the same message when you try chkdsk, then its obviously normal behaviour. (I just want to put my mind at peace )

[b0r3d]

Sorry Aaron. No such error

[Captain Nellie]

I didn't get that error either..

[crowman]

No error here either

[rik]

Nope...sorry

[XTRALONG]

I got the same msg in my 2 disk's ( c: 10gb / d: 100gb )

[R600]

I had that once, but I cant remember how I got rid of it.

Might have deleted the partition and created a new one.

[DaveXP]

No error here

[vcant]

i think this a partition error, not actual disk error.

try to repartition, as R600 suggested.

if you have partition magic, i think it corrects error on start, you might wanna try that

[Aaron]

Now that you mention it, I created a small FAT32 partition yesterday on the same hard drive so I could backup my ghost images to it. And that partition was created with PM8, I guess I'll have to reinstall that and see what's wrong

Edit: Looks like I can't check it for errors and it suggests to use the Operating System's check utility. But chkdsk never fixes it.

[R600]

You're better off using FDisk. chkdsk isn't the best utility for error correction, but since WinXP came out, do we really have a choice?!

[Sunil]

Hey Arron Run FixMBR, the problem you are experiencing happened to mew once because i had installed linux, running fixmbr fixed the volume bitmap... you need to run this from the windows recovery console.

Sunil

[Aaron]

Ok I'll give that a go. There's no side effects from running FixMBR is there? Because this might be the first time I've actually gonna use it.

[Sunil]

Sorry about the late reply, but no there are no side effects what so ever, let me know how it goes..

Sunil

[Aaron]

I ran it yesterday and the Volume Bitmap error is gone. Only time will tell if it appears again though! Thanks!