C:\$Mft file

[Sowff]

Hi

 

I have a C:\$Mft file on my computer. You are telling me it is corrupt but evidently are not deleting it. A window tells me to use the check disk feature, but I cannot find it.

 

Can you walk me how to get rid of this infernal file?

 

Thanks.

 

Sowff

[DennisD]

Hi Sowff, and welcome to Piriform.

 

Try the following to run Checkdisk:

 

1. Open My Computer.

2. Right click your C: drive and select 'Properties'

3. Next click 'Tools' and under 'Error checking' click 'Check Now...'

4. In 'Check disk options' select 'Automatically fix file system errors'

5. Click Start

 

Hope that helps.

[Augeas]

Can you walk me how to get rid of this infernal file?

This infernal file is NTFS's Master File Table which, as Wiki puts it, contains metadata about every file, directory, and metafile on an NTFS volume. If it is corrupted then you can only hope that Windows or NTFS itself can repair it. The only way to delete it is to run a disk reformat and reinstall Windows, which will give you a new one.

 

Windows goes to great lengths to prevent the MFT from being corrupted. Corruption may be indicative of a failing drive or playing with some disk partitioning/formatting software. I would follow Dennis's advice about Chkdisk (and read http://support.microsoft.com/kb/176646). If this doesn't succeed then a search on Google brings up many others with the same problem and some putative solutions.