defrag me ..... if u can !

[rahulkothari]

... this is what my d: drive tells me everytime i tell it 'fragmentation is not good for your health.' :D

whenever i try to defrag my D: partition, foll error message is displayed "there is an error on drive ... run scandisk...." and when i try to run scandisk as suggested by windows i get "there is not enough mem .....". Even when i defrag from the chaos-free, silent 'safe-mode', i get "there is not enough mem ...." error. I have 256mb ram!:mad:

i tried defragmanting from dos prompt (started with boot disk), but then the kiddy defrag program needs papa 'windows' to run. :p

my pc has 4 partitions in all, outta which the other 2 defrag smoothly everytime. also, before defragmanting, i always close all the background programs using 'end it all', disable screensaver and set all the power settings to 'never'. do v need to disable virtual memory as well?

The foll prgs cant be killed/closed thru enditall :-

explorer.exe
msgsrv.exe
kernel32.dll
systray.exe
i know the above prgs are a 'must', i wrote their names just for information sake.

here are my sys specs:-

winME
256mb ram
c:\ 2gb (257mb free)
d:\ 5gb (1 gb free)
e:\ 5gb (317 mb free)
f:\ 8gb (600 mb free) (this drive is used for virtual memory)


hey i forgot to add one thing .... just before posting this i couldnt even defrag C: , but was eventually able to do so by disabling all prgs in startup and norton AV live-update and auto-protect(which is installed in d: ).

But when i see the status (by clicking properties>tools) it says 'you last checked 150 days ago' and 'you last defrag 273 days ago' !:confused: The same is the case for other partitions, it never shows correct figures. Now isn't windows 'liar-liar'. ;)

[classicsoftware]

Hi:

I offer you several options to defrag your way to better drive health:

1) DON'T use Defrag. If you have norton utilities, use their Speed disk and disk doctor.

2) If you want to stick with MS products. Run them in safe mode.

Also, just to be sure, you shoul download the diagnostic software from the website of the drive manufacturer and test the integrity of the drive.

[sea69]

hi,

try running scandisk first from command prompt only, type:

scandisk_/autofix

(with the _ underscore representing a spa_ce)

;)

[rahulkothari]

thx for the reply.

sea69, i already ran a surface scan thru dos and fixed all the errors before posting, but that didnt help.

also one more thing i would like to tell u guys... i run scandisk every fortnight or so, and everytime it points out some or the other error ..... sometimes with file-system , sometimes with diskspace and then 'successfully' fixes it. why is that so ? can there be a problem with any of my pc components that damage the drive? :confused:

classicsoftware, i tried the same thing from safe-mode but to no avail(same memory error) and i havent yet tried norton utilites. thx for the advice though.:)

[mjc]

File and diskspace errors are usually casued by either a program not shutting down properly or a general shutdown problem. Typically you will get them if a program hangs and you need to reboot.

You can also get them if your machine shuts down too quickly for the disk cache to completely clear. MS has a fix posted here (http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/contents/WUCritical/q273017/Default.asp)

[ezpork]

It looks as if you don't have enough free space on your C: drive for the swap file. This is probable what is causing the out of memory error.

Solution #1
Go to System Properties,Performance Tab,Advanced Settings,Virtual Memory. Check "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings" From the looks of your configuration D: drive would be suitable. Use the drop box and select D: drive. Try this and see how it works.

Solution #2
Setting a conservative swapfile.
Setting the Conservative Swap File to True (1) reduces the amount of hard-disk based swap file usage. This tip is advantageous on systems with a good amount of RAM because RAM is always going to be faster than a hard drive. If your resources are low, you need to rely on your virtual memory, and the Conservative Swap File would slow your computer, rather than speed it up.


To change the Conservative Swap File to True (1):



Click on Start, point to Find, and select Files or Folders.
Perform a find on "System.ini". Once you find the file, save a copy of it to a floppy or somewhere other than your hard drive. This is a backup copy.
Open the System.ini file in Notepad.
Find the [386Enh] section and add a new line reading "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1".
Save the file and restart Windows for the change to take effect.
This is easy to reverse if you find it does not suit you. Just remove the added line from the System.ini file.
:)

[rahulkothari]

mjc, i read about that fix and also downloaded the 'fix' for it but while execution it said that it was meant only for win98SE. anyways, that doesnt matter coz i regularly update winME thru auto-update and i also checked the versions of files. ALL FILES IN MY COMP ARE UPDATED.

ezpork, welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif :) thx for replying to my doubts, but if u read my first post, i have mentioned that f:\ is used for virtual memory (yeh, my swap file is on f:\ which has 600mb free and i checked the 'ConservativeSwapfileUsage' value in system.ini and it was already set to 1.

[rahulkothari]

I tried norton disk doctor. This is what happened .....

1. While scanning the hard-drive for the first time, it showed some directory structure error and pointed to a directory named Dir0001 and also 'said' that Dir0001 has some invalid entries.
I thought, why not finish the matter once and for all...:mad: i went ahead and shooted Dir0001 at point-blank range. (actually i didnt 'shift-delete' it, but instead layed it in a +coffin+ .... the recycle bin ,.. that is :p )

2. Again, i scanned the drive for any more 'trouble-makers' (corrupted files), it showed some ........ named d:\Recycled\ ...... and so i emptied the recycle bin(which uses 10% of each drive).
Now, there was not even a piece of bone left in the +coffin+.

3.One more scan ... this time a 'thorough' surface scan. This time norton disk doc didn't complain as all the baddies had been laid to rest.:cool:

4.I got excited, energised, stimulated, charged and with a hope of defragmanting my drive successfully clicked on the Speeddisk - 'optimize now' button.
Defragmantion started and the progress bar percentage increased in synchronisation with my heart beats. At the 92nd beat, my heart stopped......:eek:

..... i tried running ndd, but it didn't find an error. Now what shall i do ? Please save my life.:(

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Usually I run 'One Button Checkup' before doing anything else with Norton's. Then Disk Doctor which it is asking you to do as in your screenshot, then Norton's Optimization Wizard which will include the Speed disk as part of it.

The file you deleted has me slightly concerned but I can't find anything of it in 98SE. You may have to reinstall it at some point. Just how, I'm not sure. Hope someone sends the ambulance over for you soon... :p

[rahulkothari]

thx for the reply, Fruss.

I am fed up of my frequent hard-drive scans (as i said before, everytime there is a crash, scandisk starts (i know how to disable it) and finds errors in almost all the drives and sometimes it fixes it while sometimes it doesnt). This problem is intermittent.

I uninstalled Norton Utilites as they tend to slow down my system (i think) and also norton disk doctor did no good.

I searched on google and download.com for any other disk repair utilities, but didnt find a reasonable one ... some were for Mac, some for win2000/NT.

If anyone here knows about any other disk utilites (freeware/trialware preferably) which i can trust upon, please let me know. coz i already have a 20gb crashed seagate hdd which was barely used for 1 year... and now this samsung hdd has started giving problems (1 yr old):mad: :mad: :mad:

[Fruss Tray Ted]

This is part of your problem it seems:

here are my sys specs:-



winME

I seem to recollect that WME is a resource HOG and 256 megs of RAM is just enough to run the OS let alone any program beyond it. Can you get your hands on any other OS? Or add some more RAM if that's a possibility also. It will not fix the errors you already have but may, at least slow your accumulating them as it should make your system more stable.

Take this as you see fit, I'm still 'wet behind the ears' :rolleyes: (novice).

The various HDD's you have should be checked by the maker's own utility from their respective websites. But of course if you already know there's bad sectors on your disks, there's not much you can do but create a work-around for it. Like partitioning out the bad sectors etc.

Have you made or broken any connections while the pc is on? A neat trick that I have learned here at this site is to unplug the pc, then press the power button to discharge any capacitors that may be able to send an impulse prior to installing or uninstalling any of the various components or peripherals.

A lot of this is stabs in the dark but even a blind hog finds a meal from time to time. I'm ojly trying to help. :cool:

[classicsoftware]

If you are into your second bad hard drive, I would look at the power supply as being flaky....

Is this system on a dedicated circut?

Do you have a REAL surge protector??

You may be having power fluctuations that are causing your problem or really bad luck

[rahulkothari]

Fruss: I seem to recollect that WME is a resource HOG and 256 megs of RAM is just enough to run the OS let alone any program beyond it. Can you get your hands on any other OS? Or add some more RAM if that's a possibility also.


I have been using winME from close to 2 yrs and it has never given me any serious problems except this 'scandisk and defrag' one. With my P!!! 500mhz, 256 sdram, 20 gb sys, i dont think winXP would run smooth as i run many useful tasks in background.... and if i do install winXP, given the resources my applications need, i will have to buy more RAM and the overall cost of the upgrade will increase. I can't afford it at this point of time.


Fruss: The various HDD's you have should be checked by the maker's own utility from their respective websites.


As per your suggestions, i downloaded a utility called SHdiag (http://www.samsungindia.com/what_sell/crp/hdd/support/utilities/index.asp) which tests the hdd for errors, from samsung website. My samsung hdd 'passed' all tests and said everything was ok so maybe the software is the culprit ... winME ???


classicssoftware : >> Do you have a REAL surge protector??
>> You may be having power fluctuations that are causing your problem.

>> Yes, i have a good quality spike-guard and the status of LEDs is shown as 'All Ok'

>> No, there are no power fluctuations here. Power supply is pretty stable and there are hardly any blackouts and brownouts.


classicssoftware: Is this system on a dedicated circut?

I didnt understand your question. Could you plz elaborate?

I just ran scandisk on d:\ (the faulty partition), it didn't complain :)and am running defrag.exe which i hope would be successful this time. I will report back as soon as the defrag finishes. Plz pray for me.... rahter ME.

[classicsoftware]

I am speaking about electricity.

If there are other items like refrigerators or air conditiones on the same circut, it can cause power flucuations that can damage pc components.

[rahulkothari]

classicsoftware, yes, my system is pretty mean.:p It doesn't share the power source with any device except a small,innocent table fan ;)

now i am releived, at least till i turn my pc back on. Hurrah, Yohooo, Yesss .... my d:\ drive was 'successfully' defragmanted and that too in just 10 minutes even though its about 70% full (3.36gb outof 4.87gb).

thx to all those who helped.... and i hope i won't have to continue this thread anymore .....hope.....

[rahulkothari]

my hope remained only that .... a hope ... it never turned into reality :(

... one more crash ("ouch" said winME) and upon restart, doc(scandisk) started his surgery and said "i am sorry, all the 4 senses are defective...need to 'fix' them". He further said, "the patient just can't open his eyes, nor can he hear,talk or feel anything, although he is lucky enough to breath(thx goodness, ny hdd is atleast detected" and so i said "OK, go ahead and fix them all and i hope that i won't have to bring him here again".

... but as i said "my hope remains a hope" .... the patient's wounds just won't heal :confused:

in short: one more crash, and upon restart, scandisk 'found' and 'fixed' errors in all the drives.:eek: till the next crash and next restart .................................................. .............................*infinity*

[Fruss Tray Ted]

rahulkothari,

Maybe we should start from the top. Or would it be the bottom and work up? (Darn English language. Say it both ways, it means the same thing :rolleyes: ) I didn't see your specs just now skimming through the posts, forgive me if I'm blind :cool: , but sometimes a fresh approach finds the obvious or overlooked item in the 'mix'. ;)

Your OS we know. But your power supply and how many other peripherals we do not. It may be mentioned in another thread but it wouldn't hurt to mention them again.

Other curiousities would be:

Did it work well as is for a number of months or was it just set up and you are trying to iron (squash :eek: ) the bugs? Was something (physical or programs) changed/added/altered just prior to the problem?

How are the various hardwares wired within your pc? (ie. what's on primary master, secondary master etc.) Are all of these drives just partitions?

What cards are being used and in what slots?

[mjc]

The way windows works (default congfig) is not to actually write data to the hard drive when you tell it too, but during periods of low system activity, this is called write behind caching. When a lock-up/crash occurs, Windows cannot complete these scheduled writes, it cannot update last access time, space used or any other disk maintenance feature. Whne you reboot from this condition, scandisk by default will automatically run to repair these errors. This is perfectly normal and actually desireable.

When a continual problem (the same exact problem) occurs, then you need to try to see if there is physical damage to the hard drive. This is done by doing a DOS (or external to the OS) scandisk. Since you have ME a Win98 bootdisk with scandisk on it would work quite nicely. Run it and have it do a complet surface scan. If it does not find any physical errors have it scan all the partitions and fix any file system errors. Then reboot into ME and run the ME scandisk, it should complete. Then from safemode, defrag the drives. IF you have access to a third party utility like Norton Disk Doctor run that.

Also, if you have been running the same install of ME for 2 years, then it may just be time to wipe it and reinstall...:(

[rahulkothari]

mjc: The way windows works (default congfig) is not to actually write data to the hard drive when you tell it too, but during periods of low system activity, this is called write behind caching. When a lock-up/crash occurs, Windows cannot complete these scheduled writes, it cannot update last access time, space used or any other disk maintenance feature. When you reboot from this condition, scandisk by default will automatically run to repair these errors. This is perfectly normal and actually desireable.

thx for the explaination, mjc. Just one question.... my e:\ and f:\ has no programs running from them as all are installed in c:\ and d:\ and now, my virtual mem file is also on c:\...... Now when a prg installed in d:\ is running, crashes, and at this point of time no data from e:\ and f:\ is accessed or copied to/from(infact these drives aren't accessed at all right from when i turn on my pc) . Hence there is no need to update last access time, space used etc. Then why does scan-disk find error in e:\ and f:\ ? Also, no disk utilities are running. i have uninstalled them all.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

here are some of the specs....

Primary Master: 1 yr old 20gb Samsung hdd (4 partitions)
Secondary Slave: CD-rom (48x creative)

2 usb ports, 1 ps2 port to which my cam and mouse are connected resp.
P3 - 500 Mhz (slot based)
256mb SDram (single chip)
intel 810 chipset with integrated sound and graphics enabled.
AMR modem installed(which i have used only once in last six months)
one PCI slot is occupied by a LAN card (which i use to access internet thru cable net)
apart from the above, there is 1 FDD, 1 fan, AT cabinet.


one more thing i would like to add is that my PC is a battle-field ;) check out the following list of conflicting hardware ......

Resource Device

IRQ 10 AC'97 Driver for Intel(r) 82801AA Controller
IRQ 10 AMR Voice Modem #2
IRQ 10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering

IRQ 5 Realtek RTL8029(AS) PCI Ethernet Adapter
IRQ 5 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering

I/O Port 0x03F6-0x03F6 Intel 82801AA Bus Master IDE Controller
I/O Port 0x03F6-0x03F6 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)

I/O Port 0x01F0-0x01F7 Intel 82801AA Bus Master IDE Controller
I/O Port 0x01F0-0x01F7 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)

IRQ 11 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus
IRQ 11 Intel(r) 82810 Graphics Controller
IRQ 11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering

IRQ 9 Intel(r) 82801AA USB Universal Host Controller
IRQ 9 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering

I/O Port 0xFFA0-0xFFAF Intel 82801AA Bus Master IDE Controller
I/O Port 0xFFA0-0xFFAF Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)

IRQ 14 Intel 82801AA Bus Master IDE Controller
IRQ 14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)

IRQ 15 Intel 82801AA Bus Master IDE Controller
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)

I/O Port 0x0376-0x0376 Intel 82801AA Bus Master IDE Controller
I/O Port 0x0376-0x0376 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)

I/O Port 0x0170-0x0177 Intel 82801AA Bus Master IDE Controller
I/O Port 0x0170-0x0177 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)

[mjc]

Ok first Windows caches the disk, it takes and reads at least the directory structure and some access info into that cache for all the drives at every startup. If that is not updated (by a normal power down) then an error will be logged on the next boot. That is why you get the others showing up, even though you haven't actually accessed them.

Second your hardware...
All the "Holder for ACPI" listings are normal and are not conflicts. The IDE channels are also normal...that is just the way the Intel IDE controller shows up, it is not a conflict either. The only possible "real" conflict I see is your sound card (yeah I know it is onboard) and your modem are sharing the same IRQ.

Since you are running ME try the 98 boot disk and scandisk from DOS.....and also check the hardware n safe mode for duplicates.....

[rahulkothari]

mjc, thank you very much for the excellent explaination.

i will solve the IRQ issue after some days (i thought there was a war going on , but it's just a small little argument ;) )

... in the mean time i will try out your suggestions.

[rahulkothari]

mjc, as you said, i run a thorough scandisk from win98 bootdisk and it found no errors.
Also, i checked for hardware duplicates in device manager in safe mode.... the following devices were listed twice ....

Disk drives - Generic IDE disk type 47

Sound, Video and Game Controllers - Microsoft streaming tee/sink-to-sink converter

System Devices - ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ steering (listed 4 times)


When in safe mode, i tried msinfo32, i got an error which read something like "your video drivers might get corrupted if you choose to run .... somethin MSdos mode" ... i dont remember the exact error.
I selected NO. .... and so all the fields were shown blank.

So, shall i remove the duplicates from safe-mode ?
One more question is bugging me .... how do duplicates affect our system ?:confused:

[rahulkothari]

i was searching on net regarding "how often should we scan (surface scan) our hdd ?" .... "is it safe if we run a surface scan and defrag every week?" ... etc, etc ....

This is what i found on google groups. I have my questions answered now.

IMO, running a weekly surface scan is unnecessary and physically hard on the harddrive.
>Do you agree or disagree?

A surface scan is not that 'hard' on the drive, not as hard as it may
sound whilst underway.The media surface is never physically touched,
only scanned by the hard drive read/write heads. (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&selm=3acace62.5868808%40news.kolumbus.fi&rnum=5)
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

mjc, in the fifth last post of this thread, i asked you the reason behind scandisk scanning all my drives after a crash.... today too, my comp crashed (actually i made it to crash), and scandisk scanned only c:,d: and f: drives. that was because, windows was running from c:\, Norton Antivirus Auto-protect from d: and a movie from f: and i suppose windows had already updated all the cache and remaining info relating to e: and hence it was not scanned. Yesterday too, my comp crashed and it scanned only c:\.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

So, now i have only 2 questions ....

>> So, shall i remove the duplicates from safe-mode ? (ghost drivers .... i suppose .... i prefer to call these drivers "Caspers" :D )

>> One more question is bugging me .... how do duplicates affect our system ?:confused:

[mjc]

The best I can come up with is there were no detected changes on the drives/partitions not scanned or Windows actually successfully updated the info it need to update (any pending writes were completed) before the crash. If you disable write-behind caching for all drives you will eliminate most scandisk runs after a crash, but at the cost of causing the system to wait for every disk write to be completed before moving on to the next thing to do.

I don't think a weekly surface scan is really needed, just a file system scan (mothnly surface scans may not be a bad idea), unless you suspect a developing physical problem with the drive.

As to "ghost drivers" they can slow down the system (more registry entries, more for Windows to look at and decide what to load), "confuse" the system (point to old driver files or locations), add to the general clutter that all Windows systems pickup and make it more difficult to diagnose a problem, and several other potential problems (like making it difficult to properly update a particular device). So yes, remove them.....