Computers Defragmenting and Scan Disk

I have a Pentium II 550mhz computer with a V770 Viper graphics card. Every time I run Scan Disk or Defragmenting at certain point it will revert back to beginning of Scan Disk or Defragmenting and start scanning all over again. Please help. I have tried everything under the sun.

 

Generally that happens when an application is trying to write or access the driver during the scan or defrag. Try using control alt delete to bring up task manager. End task on everything except systray and explorer. Now try and scan and defrag. If it works great. In the future you can just end task on one or two items to see which app is causing the error.

 

Brian is right. This happens , defrag can restart several times before completely, but if you notice it will go a little further each time before it restarts until it eventually finishes. i think it restarts every time there is a new hard drive write, having less applications running in the system box may help, but this is not a cause for concern. Just defrag when you are not in a hurry. Scandisk will sometimes do the same. Nothing to be worried about, I usually run defrag when I leave for work so I am not in a rush to get it done.

 

And remember, Disk Defragmenter takes the same amount of time to finish, whether it's 1% or 11% fragmented.

-Ivan

 

Above posts are correct as I too have ran into this before. Even a screen saver will cause defrag to stop. Hope this info helps...Loomisman

 

There is another way to do it. On the win98 cd in the utilites section should be a file calle defrag.inf. This file can be copied to your systen. Once there you go to it, right click, choose install, and when you reboot it will defrag in dos mode before windows starts up.
Read about it here

 

Is there any way in Win 98 to tell how much the drive is fragmented? In Win 95 when running defrag, it would tell how much(%)and if it was needed. I havn't found this little essential yet if it's there. Thanks in advance...Loomisman

 

Not that I know of, never seen anyone mention how to get that piece of info in 98

 

Boot windows into safemode, then defrag from there, the min needed to have windows running, the best chance of it defragmenting in one time around.

 

Plumber(or anyone else who knows)

My Win95 computer doesn't have a boot menu. Which function key or combination of keys boots into Safe Mode? Your idea makes sense but I can't get into freakin' safe mode. I tried hitting F3, F7, F114(!) but nothing happened, just went straight to regular Windows desktop.

-Bowzer

 

Not sure about win95 but in win 98.

To start Windows in safe mode

Click Start, and then click Shut down.
Click Restart, click OK, and then press and hold the CTRL key until the Microsoft Windows 98 Startup Menu appears.

For some machines, you can use F8 instead of CTRL to bring up the Microsoft Windows 98 Startup Menu.

Enter the number for Safe mode, and then press ENTER.

Notes
In safe mode, Windows uses default settings (VGA monitor, no network, Microsoft mouse driver, and the minimum device drivers required to start Windows). You will not have access to CD-ROM drives, printers, or other devices.

You can change settings as needed by clicking Start, pointing to Settings, clicking Control Panel, and double-clicking Network or System.

After you finish this procedure, you need to restart your computer before Windows will start properly.

Hope this helps, if you want click start then on help, type in safemode.

 

F5 or F6 brings you into safe mode (with or without network
support), F8 bringsup the boot menu. You could also try
Scandisk in DOS mode as well (the one in C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\).

 

Thanks Plumber, Gary for your responses.

I booted into Safe Mode as suggested, and selected #3. Safe Mode. Computer is a Dell OptiPlex gxi Windows 95 model.

However, I could not complete a successful run of Scan Disk in it, Dammit!

It "checked FAT files" and proceeded to check folders and started this step over 10 times and said another program was using resources!!

I hit CTRL+ALT and Delete to bring up Task Mgr. - the only thing that *appeaared* open was Explorer!!

Now what?

-Fed up

 

One of the worst programs that starts defrag running over and over is fastfind. If you are letting fastfind start every time you boot you are wasting a lot of resources. Fastfind is one of those wonderful Microsoft programs that just seems to keep finding its way back into your startup. It's main function is to run at certain intervals like and indexer so the computer finds microsoft files faster. GET RID OF IT!

 

But if I boot into straight Safe Mode (#3) on my menu, shouldn't (Windows)Explorer be the only thing running if I bring up the task manager?

Perplexed,
-Ivan

 

There is something you can do, load up the lastest DOS , then boot into DOS only, switch to the DOS dir, and run the defrag and scandisk in dos only.

Now scandisk can be run without loading up the latest DOS , to run scan disk only/less windows, just boot into DOS mode and type scandisk.

Don't know if there is any programs out there that will defrag without the latest DOS version loaded. But there could be, I had checked cnet/downloads and all there defrag programs required windows.

 

So you're saying that my DOS is out of date?? I'm having trouble comprehending that.

-Ivan

 

No, windows95 and 98 has the option to load the operating system and not needing the DOS dir in the root, if you look in your dir's under C:\ you may or may not see the DOS dir.

If you don't see the DOS dir, then it was never installed when the operating system got loaded. So you can not run the once used to be there DOS defragmenter program.

Remember when there was win 3.1, well that os required DOS loaded, since 95 and 98 this has been eliminated all together.

Not saying you can't still have it, if it's dir and files are not in the root dir, then for you to access them you will need to load DOS up.