Posted on 01/24/2008 6:32:07 AM PST by savedbygrace
I need help. Out of the blue, my WindowsXP (SP2) system has gone crazy. It is frequently giving me a warning message in the System Tray that says:
Windows - Delayed Write Failed Windows was unable to save all the data for the file D:/$BitMap. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.
That file is apparently hidden, but revealing hidden files doesn't show it.
My WinXP volume is on C:/ and the D:/ drive volume is for data files.
I've googled for help, and done everything that Microsoft and others have suggested. Nothing helps. This began suddenly.
Any ideas? Any other info you need before you can help me?
Thanks.
It's not that index. The $Bitmap file is used by the NTFS file system to organize the raw data on the drive. If it's messed up, then Windows doesn't know where all the pieces of your files are.
Run the diskcheck without the sector-by-sector scan first, which is faster. That will repair the file system, if possible, but won't usually take hours to do so.
Nope, different type of index. The one you are referring to is for file searches.
I ran chkdsk on both volumes last night. I have no idea what errors were found because it booted into Window after it finished and didn’t show me a log.
Make sure you run chkdsk with the "/f" switch (i.e.: chkdsk /f) in order to fix errors it finds. You can find the results of the scan in the Event Viewer under administrative tools in the Control Panel.
I’ve seen this often when a USB external drive is disconnected but obviously there’s a direct cause there as cached disk writes can’t be completed.
If it’s an internal drive then there should be any ‘good’ reason for the error message, only bad.
general advice - google the exact message and you’ll find all the advice you want.
Ahem.
I am no computer guru but chance would have it that I too recently began getting errors that “delayed write” failed.
Let me tell you what causes it and I can point you in the direction of how to fix it.
“Delayed write” is a function of the USB port, I think. You get this error when something is plugged into a USB port that does not match the version of the USB port. IE...there’s now a version 2.0 for the USB port but my computer’s USB port is geared for an earlier version. The later versions go faster.
So I purchased a wireless receiver that plugs into a computer’s USB port, a fancey-dancy...faster than a speeding bullet wireless receiver which I immediately plugged into the USB port. That’s when I started getting the DELAYED WRITE messages.
Now this DELAYED WRITE message doesn’t come up all the time. Usually you’ll get this when your computer’s doing something else and somehow whatever’s going on with that USB port is DELAYED until the computer is freed up. However, this DELAYED WRITE feature only works on the later version of the USB software. Evidently, heh, the super speed stuff allows a “save” by somehow “delaying” the write until the computer is free. Allowing you, the user, to move along without a computer tied up doing stuff. I’m guessing here.
Anyhoo, I did a search on Microsoft’s XP site...”DELAYED WRITE” I typed because, duh, that’s an error message I’d never seen before.
It seems you can click on the drive, working from memory here, and stop it from doing a DELAYED WRITE. I think it’s under “policies” or some such.
Anyway, I did that and boom, no problems since. Yeah, at times I have to wait for the computer and I would add there’s adapters to upgrade your USB port.
Again, I am NO computer guru but I did just happen to have this problem and it was really awful. Excel and Word was fracturing the files trying to be saved on that DELAYED WRITE and it was almost a disaster. I lost some really important data until I figured it out.
If I’m not right about the above, at least I hope I’ve pointed you in the right direction.
good luck.
so I can’t call the computer maker, because that’s me.
.............................................
There is indeed lots of talent here on FR
For later...
I finally got everything working again after getting rid of it, it was a mistake. All I could get was a windows setting of 256 MB for virtual memory. After several workarounds I gave up. No amount of searching or tweaking would get it back. It did effect many programs.
I did see where you should move the page file to it’s own partition and drive so I decided to try that just to get better performance and not to solve the problem. Had an old 20 GB Win98 drive that I installed as a slave ( was a noisy SOB after sitting around unused for 4 years ). Went to check the settings on my C drive just to move them to the new E drive and for some reason I was able to set the C drive page file to whatever I wanted. Problem solved by doing something nobody else identified.
Download windows defender and run it. It is free. Get the latest patches.
bump for later
You have had a lot of advice. Since it is occuring in the same file it is probably a sector going bad on the disc. You can try the various malware scans but the first thing I would do is take an image of the hard drive and transfer it to a brand new drive.
Once you have done this, you can do all of the scans or cures you want with the safety of having a back up that not includes your data but also your operating system, drivers and programs.
Saving data is the most important but tracking down and installing all of your programs and drivers is a huge PIA.
If it is just malware, you can use the extra drive as back up in case of trouble.
My 2 cents.
BINGO!
I discovered just yesterday what I believe was a conflict with Defender and AVG (paid full security version). I uninstalled Defender. I kept receiving Msiinstaller warning message in my System event viewer. During the uninstall I was required to close Outlook. I presume both were monitoring my email and that was the conflict. So far so good—clean event viewer.
Best page to do research with MicroSoft Valued People (MVP) expertise.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/newsgroups/reader.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Look out when using Western Digital tools. Most are for IDE only and wont work with SATA, even with their newer ones. Most likely wont cause a problem but WD doesn't identify them clearly. Will probably just waste someones time if they have a SATA drive and try to use the WD tools.
This seems to address some of what you are asking and gives some insight into what some of the solutions you have been given.
Moving the page file to another partition on the same drive doesn't help anything. It even may be slower since the heads have to traverse all the way to the new partition in order to read and write the page file. Leave it on your boot drive unless you get a separate physical drive, preferably one not hooked to the same cable as your current drive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.