c:\$secure problem

[fleecaf]

Hi, I have XP Home Edition SP2...Every time I boot up, I get the message:

c:\$secure is corrupt or unreadable, please run chkdsk etc...

Running check disk does nothing to help, nor does trying to find the file...It's just an annoyance really, but any help would be appreciated in how to get rid of it...

Thanks in advance!

Chris.

[Baddog]

Using the suggestion of msconfig, diagnostic startup, I isolated the Panda Internet Firewall,av,etc. after an in install and reinstall of same, all is GRREAT!!
Thanks to all
Byrne

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Oper..._22029757.html

[G]

$Secure (Security settings file contains unique security descriptors for all files within a volume) and is a resident file in the MFT (Master File Table).

As the MFT stores information about itself, the first 16KBs (first 16 entries) of the MFT for NTFS are reserved for metadata files of size 1KB. Each are used to describe the MTF in ascending order starting at, but excluding file zero (0), is as follows: $Mft (MFT – contains one base file record for each file and folder on an NTFS volume); $MftMirr (MFT mirror, guarantees access to the MFT in case of a single-sector failure. It is a duplicate image of the first four (4) records of the MFT); $LogFile (Log file contains a list of transaction steps used for NTFS recoverability and its size is dependent on the size of the volume); $Volume (Volume file contains information about the volume, i.e., label, version); $AttrDef (Attribute definition table lists attribute names, numbers and descriptors); \ (Root directory); $Bitmap (Volume cluster allocation file showing free and unused space); $Boot (Boot sector including the BIOS Parameter Block (BPB) used to mount the volume and additional bootstrap loader code used whether the volume is bootable); $BadClus (Bad-cluster file contains bad clusters for a volume); $Secure (Security settings file contains unique security descriptors for all files within a volume); $UpCase (Uppercase character mapping converts lowercase characters to matching Unicode uppercase characters); $Extend (Extended metadata directory, used for various optional extensions such as quotas, reparse point data, and object identifiers); (file 12 through to 15 are reserved for future use); Used files and directories.

[weasleman42]

This error, "c:\$secure is corrupt and unreadable..." appears to be directly related to installing the latest version of IE7. Microsoft doesn't have much info on it yet, only some comments in their user forum. Anyone else having this problem? Any solutions, besides calling Microsoft or a fresh install?

[kazhbu]

I found a way to fix this problem, however, I would do this as a last resort and back up any important data first as this could blow up in your face.

Get a copy of Partition Magic and make the rescue disks. Boot the machine to these disks and convert the hard drive to Fat32. Once that is done, boot the machine. It should work fine at this point. Then open a command promt and run convert to change the drive back to NTFS.

The command for convert is:

convert c: /FS:NTFS

C = The drive you want to Convert
/FS:NTFS = The file system you want to convert to

It's not the most elegant fix, but I have done this on 3 machines now without incident.

Good Luck!