defrag hard drive

I don't know if this is the right place to put this post. but I can't defrag my hard drive. It just acted up a few days ago. I start to defrag and it says checking hard drive for errors. it starts out at 0-percent and goes to 1-percent and back to 0. Thats all it does. I don't know what else to do,never had this problem before. Hope somebody can help me. Thank all
Richard

It might be getting hung up because it is detecting some errors. Try running Scandisk first and see if it finds and fixes some disk errors. After that, try defragging again. Try just leaving it and see if it gets beyond that 1% mark.
Rusty

This is just a shot in the dark, but do you have Win XP? If you do, read the thread in this section talking about Win XP and performance problems; some people there were having trouble with defrag after downloading a particular Windows Update file and you can read about the fix there.

I have win98. I tried runing scandisk and and that won't run either. Anything else I can do outside of taking it into a fix shop. Thanks
Richard

You have to shut everything down accept Explorer and Systray by using Alt-Ctrl-Del.

You also have to set your screen saver to none because when the screen saver turns on, the dfrag
operation thinks something has changed and will start over again ad infinitum.

Good points, SolMan.

Everything is shut down, and I don't have the screen saver running. This is the message I get when I'm running ScanDisk.(ScanDisk has restarted 10 times because windows or another program has been writing to this drive.) I have no idea what this means. I hope somebody else does. I never had any trouble before.Thanks for answering my post.
Richard

That message means that something is running in the background and is accessing the hard-drive while Scandisk is trying to do it's thing. What shows up when you do a ctrl/alt/del. The only two things that should be running are explorer and systray.
Rusty

Does scandisk work in DOS mode (where Windows isn't running)?

How do I run scandisk in the DOs mode?
Richard

Try booting into DOS mode and typing
SCANDISK
at the prompt.

Kjos, I have an old Win 98se and was having the exact same problem...so I haven't been using it. I didn't know how to describe it and you and all the great responses can now help me clean it up!
Thanks all!

Try booting into Safe Mode. I am not sure, but you should be able to defrag in Safe Mode (and most programs that run in the background won't be running).

Reboot.... Hit the F8 key (at the top of your keyboard) until the boot menu loads up. Arrow down to Safe Mode then hit the Enter key.

First, I'd run Scandisk. Then Once you have defragged (or not), reboot and it will load back into normal mode.

Good luck.


fanatic

I thank you very much, will try and let you know if it works in the safe mode.
Richard

Hi Richard,
Just wondering how you are making out with this.
Rusty

Hi Rusty
Works good in the safe mode. Wonder why it won't work in the other.
Richard

Possibly some scheduled maintenance program that updates before the defrag is finished. When that happens the defrag has to start all over again.

Good to see you were able to defrag in Safe Mode.

Definitely a background process running in normal mode that is preventing you from defragging the hard drive. Safe Mode allows you to do it because only minimal items are installed (i.e. minimum drivers, antivirus programs disabled, etc) and the background process that was running was not one of those items. You may have a trojan program running. It could be anything really.


fanatic

Noticed this thread yesterday and since I have had the "scandisk has tried 10 time message" for over a year now figured I would try it.
I rebooted in DOS mode and scandisk ran
Then I ran defrag in regular mode and that ran too
Thanks to all of you for the great advice.