VirtualBox Trigger Windows 7 Bug Causing it to Believe the File System is Broken

Booting for 4 hours and another hour to go

VirtualBox 3.2.8 (and possibly other versions) running on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 as the host operating sytsem triggers a bug that causes Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 to believe that NTFS is corrupt. Chkdsk then runs on every boot. In fact chkdsk is chasing a ghost. There is no corruption but on my system chkdsk takes over 5 hours to run to completion.

I don’t believe that VirtualBox is doing anything hinky. It is just unlucky to trigger a regression in NTFS.

This is a known regression in Windows 7 in the NTFS file system.  It occurs when doing a superceding [sic] rename over a file that has an atomic oplock on it (atomic oplocks are a new feature in Windows 7).  The indexer uses atomic oplocks which is why it helped when you disabled the indexer.  Explorer also uses atomic oplocks which is why you are still seeing the issue.  When this occurs STATUS_FILE_CORRUPT is incorrectly returned and the volume is marked "dirty" which is a signal to the system that chkdsk needs to be run.  No actual corruption has occured [sic].

Neal Christiansen
NTFS Development Lead

Fortunately, a hotfix already exists. Applying KB982927 appears to fix the issue for me.