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Trouble defragging

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Howard Herscovitch

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After a couple of year I decided it was time to defrag my c-drive.
(98se on an old 800mhz cpu). I started with error checking enabled,
went away and came back several minutes later to find out that
nothing was happening (i.e. defragging still hadn't started). I turned HD
error check off and restarted; every few seconds a message stating
the contents of the drive had changed appeared and the program
restarted. As far as I know my system is virus free and I had just cleaned
things up with spybot and adaware. How can I find out what is writing
to my HD? do I have to go thru my startup (msconfig) and eliminate
stuff? I'm not desperate to defrag because the last couple of times I
did it didn't seem to make much difference but I AM curious (and a bit
concerned). Thanks.
 
My old 98SE system would sometimes get so fragmented it would take hours to defrag if I let it go too long. The defrag it will have to start, run a time and then go back to square one to reassemble files.

Try starting defrag before you go to bed some evening and let it run all night and see what happens.

That was my solution.

David
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It may never finish, at least thats what used to happen to me. Windows would write to the HD and everything has to start over again. Boot into safe mode and defrag.
 
Howard Herscovitch said:
jeffkrol said:
It may never finish, at least thats what used to happen to me.
Windows would write to the HD and everything has to start over
again. Boot into safe mode and defrag.
Click to expand...
Never thought of that. Thanks.

P.S. any idea what Windows was writing?
Click to expand...
Probably a load of unnecessary junk, as usual.

If you have M$ Word installed, then Find Fast will probably be the culprit. It even causes Scandisk to keep restarting.

---
 
I'd recommend one of the far superior defragging tools from vendors like executive software, vcom, acronis, etc. They don't hang up as much and restart like the windows utility. Then again, 98se may not be supported by some of the newer versions of these tools...you might poke around to see if you can find an older version in the bargain bins at software stores, office supply/tech stores, etc.
 
How much free space do you have on your drive?

If it's really low, like less than 10-20%, you may have trouble defragging, if it's even possible at all.
 
Just turn off your Nortons A/V before you defrag. Your disk gets re-aranged with your data, and Nortons doesn't know that is what you are doing and causes this problem.
 
Turn off all programs except what is absolutely essential, like Win Explorer. This will speed up the defrag process.
Subsequently, defrag regularly. It will take far less time then.

Regards,
TH
 
I think that the behavior is normal considering you have not de-fragged for 2 years!
Quit all programs, then run disk clean-up, then run de-frag.

If it seems stuck and says "archiving files" or seems to be writing to disk thats normal as defrag will move files around on the HD, also it needs a fair amount of free space 15% before it can work.

My advice is to leave it de-fragging over-night, I have seen friends W98 machines take 8 hours+ so don't worry
Mark
 
I take it you have Windows 98. I now have XP and never have the problems I always experienced with defragging. Mine would never finish unless it was started in safe mode or some such thing (regardless of closing down all programs including those running in the background). It drove me insane. Its a well known problem and I am still suffering from the trauma.
 
This should work:

There was a post saying you could defrag in DOS, and a counter post of no but I do believe the old 98 defrag program IS a DOS program. Thus the need to pull the defrag program off a Win ME disc. Think MS also has an update download somewhere on MS.
Also you could be out of space as well.

quote..............................................................

Sunday, April 17, 2005 at 8:41 pm
Posted by Brian Wexler (1 messages posted)

This worked for me in under 45 minutes. No one has been able to get past 2% in past 2 years on this machine. Nice to get forum support that works.
On Sunday said:
This is what works for mine...which had a similar defrag problem as yours. Using
Ctrl/Alt/Delete, close out all running applications EXCEPT Explorer and Systray.

Once that's done you should be able to go to your Defrag and it will work. Mine works

every time using this method. Others on this forum will recommend installing Defrag
from the 98ME version...which I never got around to doing. I understand that's a
good option and has a faster defragmenter. Bob
Click to expand...
.....................................................unquote
 
...(I forget how I learned this, but it works)...I'm using Windows 98.

1. Turn off Screen Saver
click Start > Run> enter 'MSFONFIG' click OK

Uncheck box for "load start-up group"

click 'apply' then restart the computer.

Now De-Frag your system

To restore everything,

Start> Run> check 'normal' and check 'load start up group'

(you might want to look at the 'start up tab' at the top and turn some unneeded ones off or on as needed)

click OK and restart the computer

All the little running things in the background is what makes it stop and start in the de-frag. This method works fairly quickly, too.

Good Luck!
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Thanks for all the helpful suggestions BUT the question still remains: is it
worth the trouble? (on my system anyway). As I said earlier the last time
I defragged there was almost no difference in system performance.
Another question; I have a second (larger) harddrive that is almost empty,
is there some way to get defrag to make use of it? It should be much
faster and if MS Defrag won't use 2 drives maybe there is a program out
there that will!
 
Hi,

I think it is worth defragging. I still have one machine running Win98 and try to defrag weekly (as well as my XP machine). Maybe I'm a neatness nut.

To speed up defrag, get the defrag utility from Win ME. Anyone who has Win ME has it. Same file name and location as the Win 98 defrag. Way faster.

A google search should find the file.

Good Luck!

--
Gary F
 
I have read twice in PC World that regular defragging does not have great benefits. However, many other articles suggest periodical defrags. And the time interval since you last defragged suggest yoju'll gain at least something, especially with a relatively slow 800 mh machine.
--
joel albert
[email protected]
 
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