Cant defrag

[IllMedication]

I have defragged before, its not new to me but now all of the sudden it will not go past 0% I even let it sit at 0 for twenty minutes. Any ideas please I have alot of stuff slowing me down now:( Thank you in advance.

[Silsarik Dracoen]

Well one of the best tips I have for defragging your hard disk is to reboot into safe-mode and run the defrag in there. Safe mode shuts down the majority of background apps, your network connection, etc and with those gone the Defrag should be able to run without incident.

The only real downside is that you have to basically leave your computer the hell alone for several hours while it does it's thing. *chuckle* I guess this is in part god's way of saying it's time to either catch up on our reading or go outside and get a little fresh air. ;)

[IllMedication]

Ok ty for the reply..gonna give it a try.

[IllMedication]

ok sorry don't know if edit worked..but i tried this and while in safe mode at 10% it reads Drives contents changed..restarting
Please help if you can~thanks

[Silsarik Dracoen]

Really? Huh...that is odd. Mind if I ask what version of windows you're using? It sounds kinda like you're using the old defrag utility in Windows 95/98/Me if it keeps on restarting.

That version of the defrag utility was notoriously prone to restarting over and over. Sometimes it'd start over if you looked at it crosseyed or if you sneezed wrong. Unfortunately about the only real thing I've found that you can do is either a) let it run in safe mode for however long it may take which can sometimes take all day and all night, or b) try using the ctrl alt delete program manager to kill every single program and process that's running on your system in the hopes that you'll keep it happy.

....*smacks self* Oh yeah! Best tip for that version...temporarily set your disk cache to zero. That's right switch off all your disk cache, that'll keep your system from trying to use your HD as ram and should get it to behave better. Just remember to turn it back on before you actually try to use your system.

[IllMedication]

Thanks so much for your advise I'll give this a try[:D]

[Bori Grimbattle]

Another hint for a quick defrag is to disconnect yourself from the internet. Especially true if you are on cable where programs such as Windows or a virusproggie may be asking for and recieving updates.

[gopher65]

or just completely shut down all non-essential programs using ctrl-alt-del (in win XP). That's what I do.

[zoarre]

Hi, Ill.

I liked Silsarik's recommendation to use safe mode. If you want more options, here's a few that I'm aware of:
[*]Try a different defragmenter. When I used Windows 2000, Speed Disk (part of Norton Utilities (part of Norton SystemWorks)) from Symantec was much better than the stock defragmenter (based on Diskkeeper from Executive Software). Speed Disk even defragmented the page file.[*]Use a file defragmenter instead of a disk defragmenter. Contig, from sysinternals.com (a free, no-strings download) will defragment the files (or directories) that frequently get fragmented on your drive if you know which one they are.[/list]Please use caution, however. If system functions such as defragmentation are not working properly, it may be an indication that your drive is corrupt somewhere. You can use the command line chkdsk utility to fix these.

Using any of the utilities I've mentioned is an at-your-own-risk ordeal. They may cause data loss, especially if your drive is already corrupted. Please back up files that are important to you before using any of them, if you choose to do so.

I hope this helps.

[Gilresk]

In my time spent doing tech support I also remember a common problem with defragmenting was having a screensaver running in the background. For some reason some screensavers cause disk I/O (even some of the windows standard ones) that can throw off the defrag. Also along those lines make sure your power save settings for your hard drive are disabled (which they should be anyways since they're only worse for your hard drive).

[Dragoniade]

Make sure you also have some free space available.
Depending of the software, some defragmenter ask between 10 to 20% of free space on the drive you're trying to defrag.

And since Horizons like to make log file until your HD is full, maybe you could try to remove the unnecessary logs.

[Seikojin]

:o
Another thing is defrag will continue to scan until it is complete, restarting when data changes... Eventually it will finish. I have had defrags take 8 to 10 hours on a 60 gig drive that was about 37% fragmented...