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Windows 7 RTM contains a chkdsk bug

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c627627

c(n*199780) Senior Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2002
EDIT: Windows 8 fixed this problem which was still present in Windows 7 as of 2014.


http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/08/05/windows-7-rtm-contains-a-rather-nasty-chkdsk-bug

The bug occurs when the CHKDSK /R command is initiated on a non-system volume. Memory usage of the chkdsk.exe process soars until the system is using over 90% physical memory. In some cases this will cause the system to become unresponsive and unstable.


EDIT: Many stories out talking about how bad this is but here's one talking about how this is not a big deal:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1235

:bang head EDIT: Sep 2, 2009: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=616911
 
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seems like it would be a simple windows update to fix something that; 95% of the people out there won't experience anyway, right?
 
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I read that it's a chipset controller issue, and not a chkdsk /r bug. Apparently the issue can be remedied by updating the chipset drivers to the latest available.
 
You mean Windows Update will not be issued for this?
 
From the article you linked by Ed Bott, it sounds like the memory usage is by design and the crash hasn't been replicated yet. Ed did his own testing and his results were not very interesting, except in that they contrasted everyone making a big deal of this non-issue.

My takeaway from this is that people blogging are really ready to jump all over windows 7 like they did vista and continue the beatings.
 
As soon as I posted this thread, that occurred to me too, I.M.O.G.. I then tried to at least erase the words 'rather nasty' from the thread title but it only made the change inside the thread, not to the main thread title.
 
:) Thanks. So on the topic, I almost immediately edited to include the link saying this is not a big deal, but even redduc900
attachment.php
talks about this as something that needs an update rather than it all being by design. :shrug:
 
He's probably right - I heard he was wrong once before, but he killed all the witnesses so there's no way to be sure. Although that line of thinking is likely specific to the crashing issue, not the memory consumption - a Microsoft spokesman said the high memory usage is by design.
 
From http://www.chris123nt.com/2009/08/03/critical-bug-in-windows-7-rtm :


Hi there…sorry to get dragged into this. Of course always want to investigate each and every report of any unexpected behavior.

In this case, we haven’t reproduced the crash and we’re not seeing any crashes with chkdsk on teh stack reported in any measurable number that we could find. We had one beta report on the memory usage, but that was resolved by design since we actually did design it to use more memory. But the design was to use more memory on purpose to speed things up, but never unbounded — we requset the available memory and operate within that leaving at least 50M of physical memory. Our assumption was that using /r means your disk is such that you would prefer to get the repair done and over with rather than keep working.

While we appreciate the drama of “critical bug” and then the pickup of “showstopper” that I’ve seen, we might take a step back and realize that this might not have that defcon level. Bugs that are so severe as to require immediate patches and attention would have to have no workarounds and would generally be such that a large set of people would run across them in the normal course of using their PC.

We appreciate the kind words that such a bug as above is “out of place” with Windows 7–we’re working hard. We are certainly going to continue to look for, monitor, and address issues as they arise if required. So far this is not one of those issues.

Some have reported (as above) that this specific issue repros and then goes away with updated drivers. We haven’t yet confirmed that either but continue to try. We just kicked off overnight stress testing of 40 machines of variants as reported by FireRx. We’ll see.

Let’s see if we can work on this one and future issues together. Deep breath :)

–Steven Sinofsky
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a memory leak would be if the CHKDSK command used all your RAM and never gave it back once completed. However, this is not clearly the case.

It would appear that its "caching" the contents of the drive in RAM. If the drive is not consuming more than your amount of RAM, it will never use all of it.

The first 3 pics show that I'm only using a little over 512MB of ram for the CHKDSK... the bottom two, the drive has over 100 gig worth of files...
 

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Joeteck - c6 and I are interested in the example you present with over 100GB of data.

Under those conditions, what is the experience like while using the system as checkdisk runs?

He may have other questions or specifics about testing behavior of the system.
 
Joeteck - c6 and I are interested in the example you present with over 100GB of data.

Under those conditions, what is the experience like while using the system as checkdisk runs?

He may have other questions or specifics about testing behavior of the system.


At this time I don't have a drive with over 100gig of data. The last two images were with a drive with about 45gig in use. (My mistake in my first post) However, I think once you've passed your RAM threshold, it does not matter, you will peg your system RAM every time. Meaning, if your drive is using more than you have RAM, you're SOL.

Also, this memory issue happen @ step 4 of 5...
 

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I also opened up word, excel , power point and Publisher 2007 , and it did seem slow, but still loaded with no problem...
 
For the record, this is not about crashing or disabling the system.

This is about whether this is a bug whereby our memory usage goes through the roof to such an extent as to cause black screens / slow down our systems causing them to be temporarily unusable. And it is.
 
I don't think the unusable part is well established, that's my only point of contention still.

By Joetecks comment, things seemed slow but they loaded no problem. I'd like to hear more about how bad it is, so we can say exactly how bad.

Trust that I'm not out to do Microsoft any favors by minimizing the problem, I just want to understand exactly what the problem is like.
 
I don't think the unusable part is well established, that's my only point of contention still.

By Joetecks comment, things seemed slow but they loaded no problem. I'd like to hear more about how bad it is, so we can say exactly how bad.

Trust that I'm not out to do Microsoft any favors by minimizing the problem, I just want to understand exactly what the problem is like.


I agree.. I can't get W7 to be in a unusable state. While using 3 gig of RAM for CHKDSK this system still ran my Outlook and the other 2007 MS apps, fine...just slow.. I'm going to do another test... with more data. I have an 750gig 2.5" WD " MY passport" I'm going to load up with stuff.
 
Thanks... I'd actually prefer for this to be really bad and really reproducible. Then we'd have more to talk about!

And I don't doubt at all what c6 is seeing, I just want some more examples of this too.
 
I still think it is a W7 bug, because when I do the same thing in Windows XP, it works extremely quick. W7 sits on 10 percent for 5 minutes using lots of RAM, however XP, uses only 25MB, and blows through to 94% step 4 in seconds....
 
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