I just overcame an issue that had me tearing my hair out. I run XP Pro retail with SP1. Running chkdsk, I kept getting error reports about the vol bitmap and allocated space. After submitting a support request to Microshit and them not answering it, I further pursued the matter.
If you uninstall several progs, Microshit themselves have posted info that chkdsk will not shrink down the MFT. Hence, it reports an error about unallocated space. So the problem seemed to be that the MFT can grow but never shrink back down like it probably should. They had mentioned that you may need to use a 3rd party utility.
I went to the website for Diskeeper, and found that it defragged the MFT during a bootime defrag. Bingo. This solved my problem.
I'm posting all this because I know Sephiroth had the same exact issue and this solved it for him too.

thx for the info have been following your post about it ...nice to have a answer when needed.....thx for sharing the outcome

Glad to help DM. :)

Thank you belthazor, was waiting for the follow-up.
I'm still a little puzzled though (ok, it might be my normal status). I never have had, or heard of, this problem before. It's known since a long time that MFT doesn't shrink and that it can be defragged by using 3-rd-party utils.
What that's new is that both you and Sephiroth run SP1. Is this related to the problem? Do you have a link to the m$ info you mentioned?
Good thing it's solved, anyway! But as always I want to know a little more...

.unicorn, I had this problem one time before I even had SP1, so I don't really think that's it.
As far as the link to the info, I didn't save it but if you do a search at the knowledge base you should be able to find it. :)



Last edited by belthazor at Today at 7:06 pm

Well, what can one say?

I have never run into this problems. NTFS is used world-wide and it's not designed to ruin every hdd it gets into contact with...

My conclusion is that what has happened is to be pu tin the category "unsolved mystique stuff" as you don't belive it is related to hardware trouble (faulty hdd) which was my first guess.
(Off-topic I basically like unsolved weird stuff - makes the world a little more interestening besides all the troubles it causes us)

I THRIVE on pc problems .unicorn. ;)