defrag problem

[scotsman1228]

When I try to defrag, I get the message that Drive C is

[JoeP517]

What OS?

Joe

[JohnGray]

Not all computer problems are due to viruses. And I haven't heard of the "prevent defragging" virus!

If you give a bit more detail about your problem and the operating system, as Joe asked, we might be able to take it further...

John

[scotsman1228]

Many thanks for both replying - the OS is Windows ME.

As I said before, when I try to defrag all I get is the "Locke3d by a Disk Utility" error message.

[JoeP517]

Check out this MS KB article: Error Message "Windows Cannot Defragment This Drive now Because It Has Been Locked by a Disk Utility" When Using Disk Defragmenter.

Joe

[scotsman1228]

Many thanks. The Norton Doc was the problem. I should say that a friend put the Doc on my machine and said that he had defragged my pc. I could not therefore understand why I could not defrag thereafter. And as you get rid of one problem . . .

So I then used speed disk to defrag. It only does 50% and then freezes. Any suggestions?

Let me congratulate Woody's Lounge. I had problems with Word, Excel and this H/w problem and got answers to them very quickly. What a site!!!!

[DaveA]

"50% and then freezes"

Close all items running except for Explorer.exe including the screen saver (turn it to NONE), then give it a try.

[Rebel]

In addition to Dave's suggestion, I found that Speed Disk worked without the freezing and restarts when the virtual memory size was fixed - not dynamic. There are different opinions on how large or small the VM size should be. This article refers to Windows XP but it is a starting point. Personally, I use Diskeeper . Once an initial defrag is performed followed by a boot time defrag, Diskeeper works in the background keeping your disk defragmented as you work.

[AlanMiller]

Chiming in late here, but you might have some luck using the <img src=/S/free.gif border=0 alt=free width=30 height=15> GEODisk2 utility. I've had some success with it on numerous "problem" machines before. Among other things, it shuts down processes to a minimal state, like DaveA suggests, before it runs defrag.

Alan

[JohnGray]

I don't know whether, in any of the stuff suggested, that the use of
CHKDSK C: /F /V /R
from a Command Prompt Window is recommended? This probably will ask you to confirm that you want to run the CHKDSK on the next reboot. Allow yourself a few hours for it to do its work (I say "a few hours" because if it finds any disk surface problems it can take a LOT of time to work on them... It may take less than half an hour, though). Then try the DEFRAG again.

And the first thing I should have said was to do a proper backup -- but you will have done this already!

"Bon chance" (as they say in Glasgae!).

John