Problem Defragging Win 98// Freezes @ 10%

[The Flying Chicken]

Evening All,
I would appreciate some advice on defragging my hard drive. It only manages to get to 10%, and then it freezes.I have tried it in Safe mode,(failed miserably.)I ran "msconfig" and disabled the normal startup procedures and tried again, but it still didnt work. Is is possible to do it in DOS mode or something like that?I have also gone into CTL+ALT+DEL and made sure there is nothing untoward running in the backround, as well disabling the screensaver and the virus scanner.
I have a P3/450;with a 8.3 gig hard drive, running WIn 98 OS2

Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated!

[Breezwell]

Have you tried doing a surface scan of your hard drive? It is a good idea to scan the drive before defrag. You may have some bad sectors or clusters that are holding up the defrag. I have found this to happen every now and then. It could even be a RAM problem. I have found that swapping RAM sometimes lets me get through the defrag.

Hope this helps a little. I realize that what wroks for one person may not wrok for another. Good luck.

Breezwell


Originally posted by The Flying Chicken:
Evening All,
I would appreciate some advice on defragging my hard drive. It only manages to get to 10%, and then it freezes.I have tried it in Safe mode,(failed miserably.)I ran "msconfig" and disabled the normal startup procedures and tried again, but it still didnt work. Is is possible to do it in DOS mode or something like that?I have also gone into CTL+ALT+DEL and made sure there is nothing untoward running in the backround, as well disabling the screensaver and the virus scanner.
I have a P3/450;with a 8.3 gig hard drive, running WIn 98 OS2

Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated!



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Support bacteria, it is the only culture some people have......

[Paleo Pete]

Boot to a Win98 Start Up disk and run scandisk.

scandisk /all /autofix /surface will run an unattended scan on all local drives, and a surface scan as well. It will also automatically fix any errors it finds.

Then reboot and run defrag from Windows. Defrag was introduced with DOS 6.x and works fine in DOS, but I haven't been able to get anything but a message that says "This program requires MS Windows to run" when I try it with the DOS 7 that's included in Win 98.

It might be possible, but I haven't figured out how yet...

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If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[The Flying Chicken]

Thanks for the replys gents,

I tried all the ideas that were mentioned and unfortunately it is still hangin at 10%.Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks.

[supernova]

Me too! I tried defragging last night but it ran for 2.5 hrs on my Windows 98...and it never left 10%, seemed to get lost on a loop...once I briefly saw 37% but it went right back to 0% complete. It didn't freeze up ...just went on and on and on. Finally I shut down the computer and went to sleep.
Is this normal for a "defrag" to go on for almost 3 hours? Emachines 500is. Please, don't say "throw the emachines out!"

[This message has been edited by supernova (edited 10-10-2000).]

[Paleo Pete]

Maybe the MS Knowledge Database will have a bit of help

Drive Contents have Changed (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q186/9/78.ASP)

Defrag Hangs after Choosing Drive (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q218/1/60.ASP)

Description of Disk Defragmenter (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q186/1/71.ASP)

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If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[abacus]

Defrag hangs for me too around ten per cent, but it eventually completes. I usually run it over night. Interestingly enough, since I switched from FAT32 to FAT16, defrag runs much faster.

I wonder if you get more fragmentation with FAT32 because it uses smaller clusters...

Also here's a suggestion I've used from the reskit:

"Some programs are always running in the background of Windows 98 and are difficult to close. If you closed all programs and Disk Defragmenter still restarts frequently and cannot complete, you may want to run Disk Defragmenter before Windows displays the logon prompt (at this point, most programs have not been started).

To run Disk Defragmenter before Windows displays the logon prompt

Open Registry Editor.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\RunServicesOnce, and create a new string value named Defrag.
Set the value to defrag.exe
– Or –

Set the value to defrag with your choice of command line switches. See “Command Line Switches for Disk Utilities” later in this chapter.

Close Registry Editor and restart your computer.
Disk Defragmenter runs before the Windows logon prompt with minimal interruptions. Putting this command line under the RunServiceOnce key takes effect only once. Subsequent computer restarts will not cause Disk Defragmenter to run again."

[mmrmike]

I dont't Know if this will help or why but when I had this problem I went in to my bios and turned my power mangement off then I shut off computer.
Restarted then shut back off. restarted went into bios enabled power mangement. After that my defrag started working correctly hope this helps

[Hardtek1976]

try run defrag in safe mode, minimal drivers are loaded. Most programs such as antivirus, disk backup, the @home (tiago) software all run in the background and will cause defrag to continually restart.Also in normal mode use control\alt\delete to make sure nothing is running except explorer and systray.

[Daniel J Matthews]

try just leaving it honestly

i once had in the time before dinosaurs a AMD K5 166, 32mb of Ram and a 1 gig hard drive anyway at that time i was just new to PC's and i was getting a bit of tuition and we defraged the hard drive in 98 2nd edition and that got stuck on 10%, any way i was told by Mat (Tutor and computer expert from the days of the BBC)that if i left it it would be just fine

[Paleo Pete]

Try checking the Task Scheduler and see if anything is trying to run from there.

POwer management has already been mentioned, that can cause defrag to restart too. Anything that accesses the hard drive can do it, since defrag sees it as the drive's contents changing.

[Ctrl] [Alt] [Del] ONCE will bring up the task monitor, from there you can shut down everything but Explorer and Systray, which both must be running. Provided Power management isn't an issue, with only those two applications running, defrag should run until it finishes without restarting.

Daniel: Whoever told you that was wrong. If defrag restarts after 10% something is wrong, and should be fixed. Otherwise defrag is not likely to ever finish.

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If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[Chuck]

A easy way to leave Explorer and Systray running and closing down all other applications prior to doing a scan or defrag or install is to use a program called "End it All" doing a search on Enditall will bring up the PC Magazine site. It is a free download and easy to use.

[sea69]

that is the most rediculous comment I ever heard....... Originally posted by Daniel J Matthews:
try just leaving it honestly

i once had in the time before dinosaurs a AMD K5 166, 32mb of Ram and a 1 gig hard drive anyway at that time i was just new to PC's and i was getting a bit of tuition and we defraged the hard drive in 98 2nd edition and that got stuck on 10%, any way i was told by Mat (Tutor and computer expert from the days of the BBC)that if i left it it would be just fine



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lol

[damfino]

THANKS,I was having the same problem ;stuck at 10%
on defrag. Read this forum and LOL ,heres the answer.
Downloaded ENDITALL,worked like a charm,just warm booted
to restore progs. GREAT,and keep up the great work.
BOB

[mjc]

There is another way to help defrag along that is edit the system.ini file to say:

SHELL=defrag.exe

for this to work you MUST:

REM SHELL=explorer.exe

Then after this change reboot Windows will load only defrag and run it instead of explorer.

After defrag is done you must switch the lines back.

The edits can be done in DOS type edit_system.ini at the DOS prompt or in safe mode with sysedit.(use a space instead of the underscore. I prefer doinig it in DOS.

I used to keep both lines in my system.ini file and REM the one I didn't need, but I finally gave up on it and am now using McAfee 'DiskTune' instead of defrag (the Norton program is supposed to be good also I haven't tried it though). After doing this for a while (2-3 times a week sometimes more often) defrag now runs fairly quickly (10 gig drive 3+ gig used 45min to two hours depending on level I set: rearrange programs etc.)
Disktune on the other hand always runs in about 30 mins to an hour. Most often I have found that drives that need defrag the most are the the ones that have the most problems using it. So once you get through defrag once use it often (minimum once a week, I've even heard of people who use Task Scheduler to run it nightly when they aren't using their computers)

OOPS sorry for the double post I tried to edit the first one to add the last lines but I guess I sent it twice instead.

[This message has been edited by mjc (edited 12-18-2000).]

[BigBlue66]

Hey Airborn Clucker, http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

I have been using Norton's Speedisk for years, in one version or another. I currently have SystemWorks. It's a breeze. And, you can fine tune it to put your most heavily used files and folders at the front of the disk. I wouldn't leave home without it. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Cheers,

Big Blue 66

[kenja]

In my case, the defragmenter never got anywhere because I neglected to totally disable my anti-virus or Norton programs before it began. The defragmenter would get to, yeah, about 10-15%, then start all over again.