Defragmenting!

shillelagh · 19-03-2006, 23:20

A friend of mine her computer won't defrag. It will go 1 or 2 or even sometimes 4% and then go back to 0%. She has windows me on her comp. Tried turning her firewall and antivirus off and it still wouldnt work. There wasn't anything else turned on. Also when you put the full screen up all you see is a big white screen - nothing comes up to show what it's doing like on xp. Ran disc clean up and spybot and adaware but still wouldnt work. Any ideas?

grannyclaret · 19-03-2006, 23:36

oh not another.....my computer has been down since thursday...and thats what was the matter,,i had to wait until today for my son to sort it out ....he had to get in touch with A,O,L.

Less · 19-03-2006, 23:44

This may help
http://www.marthas-web.com/problems.htm

entwisi · 20-03-2006, 07:59

Usual thing, reboot into safe mode (Press f8 whilst the PC is booting up, you may need to keep pressing it to 'catch it', you will get a menu, choose safe mode, not safe mode with command line)

It will take a bit longer than normal to boot and will look terrible as it defaults to 640x480 resolution with only 16 colours. Run Defrag from in there also worth running scandisk as well jsut to be sure.You will not have access to CD drives, internet or anything else as it doesn't load any devices beyond what is absolutely necessary.

Or....(Ian putting his usual plug in) use an OS that doesn't need defragging

Dean · 20-03-2006, 08:34

yea my dad had this problem with windows me to still not got it sorted

Neil · 20-03-2006, 10:09

Better still don't use Windows defrag. It is not un-known for it to move whole folders to the wrong place and make a total mess of your drive.

Ian - please explain how Linux deletes files without leaving gaps

entwisi · 20-03-2006, 11:09

I didn't say that it did matey! only that it doesn't affect performance on Linux.

Have a raed of this http://aplawrence.com/Bofcusm/834.html

Neil · 20-03-2006, 23:24

That will apply to Windows XP as well then won't it?

madmal_1 · 21-03-2006, 00:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by shillelagh

A friend of mine her computer won't defrag. It will go 1 or 2 or even sometimes 4% and then go back to 0%. She has windows me on her comp. Tried turning her firewall and antivirus off and it still wouldnt work. There wasn't anything else turned on. Also when you put the full screen up all you see is a big white screen - nothing comes up to show what it's doing like on xp. Ran disc clean up and spybot and adaware but still wouldnt work. Any ideas?

i used to get same problem so i bouht diskeeper 8.0 software loaded it and no probs anymore mal

entwisi · 21-03-2006, 07:42

Neil, nope, unfortunately XP is still built on the old underpinnings of NT4. It hasn't changed how it accesses disks so it still suffers hence the inclusion of a tool to 'fix it'

Driller · 23-03-2006, 01:15

I hear defragmenting is needed .. but all it does is place files in order.. is it really needed?.. dosent create much extra space

entwisi · 23-03-2006, 08:15

It may release wasted space depending on how badly fragmented your disk is. What it does in a Windows environment is make it quicker as the head doesn't need to jump about the disk to load a file into memory.

so in Windows, yes its needed.

Madhatter · 25-03-2006, 18:16

I use the one on norton system works, i cant get on with disc keeper.

mantrabooks · 07-04-2006, 08:13

Thanks entwisi - worked for me!!!!