Dirty Disk Check Procedure in Windows XP

ntroduction

A disk volume in a Windows computer running MS Windows XP and later can occasionally be marked as "dirty" which essentially means that the CHKDSK facility runs every time the computer starts. Why is the volume dirty? The Windows XP operating system does a regular check of the underlying file system where all the files needed to run the system are stored. If it finds inconsistencies in that file system, a check disk is scheduled to run at boot-up time (because it cannot run on files which are being used in a Windows environment. Once it has run, Windows can restart.
How To Unset A Dirty Bit On A Windows Disk Volume

A dirty volume can be checked by running the command:-

fsutil dirty query [drive volume name]

Example:

fsutil dirty query f:

or if the drive to be checked is d: then it would be

fsutil dirty query d:

It will likely come back with

Volume - f: is Dirty

If the volume is OK it will come back with:

Volume - f: is NOT Dirty

So now the volume must be manually checked to stop this endless loop of booting and rebooting and every time it does the volume is checked.
At a command prompt, type the command

CHKNTFS /X F:

(This will tell Windows NOT to check the disk at boot time.)

Reboot the computer, and unless another volume has issues, it will not pause for the CHKDSK facility before going back into Windows.
Now, once the computer has gone fully back into Windows, a thorough CHKDSK needs to be performed in order for the volume to be fixed so that it won't need checking at the next reboot. Type the command:

CHKDSK /f /r f:

and volume f: will be taken through five stages and the dirty bit will be finally unset. You can check that it is clean by issuing the command,

fsutil dirty query f:

and it will likely tell you

Volume - f: is NOT Dirty
So, why does it run over and over again? There are levels of operation within CHKDSK and CHKNTFS. And frequently, a drive will not require the very deep five stage scan required to fix this problem.