Defrag. problems in Win/98

[Dr.J]

One of my wifes friends (from work) ask me why he can't defrag his HHD ? It starts gets to 2% then shuts down ? Win/98 system!

I told him I wasn't sure as I have Win/2k Pro. &
Win NT4.0 on my systems, and my wifes win/98se has no problems w/defrag.

Is this a comon problem with win/98? and maybe he should download a defrag utility? any Ideas on the problem or advice on a defrag program?

Thank you in advance for any help!

[Sandman72]

The times I have seen this, the problem was that they had WAY too much stuff in the startup etc... Start the machine in safe mode and should defrag just fine.

[King Grover]

I had that happen before. Defrag actually says that it cannot run becuase of error on the drive and recommends running scandisk first. Try that maybe.


[quote]Originally posted by Dr.J:
<strong>One of my wifes friends ( </strong><hr></blockquote>

Dude, how many wives do you have???????

[Sandman72]

re read your ? Sorry missed the part about shutting down. I have seen similar problem caused by too much in startup or low resources. Never seen shutdown though. Still recommend trying in safe mode.

[Quiet Thunder]

First check the startup programs. Programs running while attempting to defrag will give you issues. Second, boot into either Safe mode or Dos mode. Dos mode preferred, but Safe mode will do. Then run a full scandisk to check for bad sectors. Then run a defrag.

[AlienDyne]

Jimmy, I think there may be something wrong with the memory of the system. If it is a problem with the scandisk command, or corrupted files or the HDD, the machine does not shut down!

I would use either DocMem or GoldMemory to check what's going on with the memory modules.

These are the links:
<a href="http://www.docmemory.com" target="_blank">http://www.docmemory.com</a>
<a href="http://www.goldmemory.cz" target="_blank">http://www.goldmemory.cz</a>

Otherwise, you should try a third-party defrag utility such as Norton Disk Defragmenter to see what happens.

Also a virus check wouldn't be a bad idea.

Good luck bro!

[RedBeard]

I would go to the system tools, then to system information and then do a scan for corrupted files, first of all, then use the ctrl+alt+del command to shut everything down (EXCEPT explorer & system tray) then do a scan disk and then a defrag.

Also if he's running a viruse protection like Nortons this can deffinatly stop the defrag for completeing.

[Ya_know]

The symptom you described does steer towards a possible hardware issue. From first analysis, I would agree with AlienDyne. However, because it hasn't been suggested, I thought I would bring up the topic of deleting the Applog folder from C:\Windows. Here is a good article, touches on allot of the previous suggestions, and has links to other good articles.

<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q218160" target="_blank">Disk Defragmenter Hangs After Choosing Disk to Defragment (Q218160)</a>

It’s something else to try.

[craigmodius]

Ensure that the screen saver is disabled, by selecting the screen saver to 'none' from the 'display' applet in the contol panel. Don't know if that was covered already, but that will keep defrag from running thru to completion.

Before they run defrag, have them ctrl+alt+del and end task on everything until 'explorer' and 'systray' are the only things running, because everything else is a program running in the background.

If still no luck; Try the same steps mentioned above in Safe Mode.

If and only if the above doesn't work have someone who is technically savy <a href="http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/answerstips/story/0,24330,3345210,00.html" target="_blank">do this</a>

This involves telling your system to run defrag as the shell to Windows rather than Explorer, and shouldn't be attempted by someone who doesn't know what they are doing.

[Toppro]

The reason that it stops at 2% is that something is running in the background and it's disrupting the process of defrag. The easiest thing to do is to run defrag in SAFE MODE