FixNPuters
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Defrag not working.
A friend of mine has a system that has an 8.5g HD and Win98 OS. Scan Disk has been performed (unsure whether it was a thorough) and when defrag is started, the percent completed never changes. Defrag has been started at bed time and he let it run all night and the next morning it still shows zero percent complete. During defrag it does show the little pieces stacking up but zero percent completed remains the same.Does anyone have an idea of what is wrong? The system is about 2 yrs old and has never been defrag'd.
John, as I can see you are relatively new to this site, and to this area, Win98. This site observes a protocol that requires tech not post a proposed answer unless that answer is reasonably expected to resolve the issue. In all other cases, post a comment. If you comment is correct, the questioner can accept your comment as the answer. Your cooperation would be appreciated, as posting maybe style answers only serve to block the question from view by other techs who may have the real answer.
Dennis
Dennis
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I've seen defrag restart even when all other tasks but Explorer have been shut down. That is usually caused by Windows' swapping. If this happens try resizing the swap file as follows:
First, don't do this if you have less than disk space on C:\ than about 50mb+3 times the amount of RAM (see example below). You can't hurt anything otherwise (acually it should improve the overall system performance).
1) Right-click My Computer/Properties
2) Click Performance
3) Click Virtual Memory
4) Click "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings"
5) Set Minimum and Maximum to be the same number (3 times the amount of RAM is a good rule of thumb)
- for example, if he has 64mb of ram, set both Min and Max to 3*64= "196" (but first make sure he has at least 196+50=250mb free on C:.
6) Click OK,OK and let the computer reboot, then try the Defrag again.
Hope this made sense 8-)
Jon
First, don't do this if you have less than disk space on C:\ than about 50mb+3 times the amount of RAM (see example below). You can't hurt anything otherwise (acually it should improve the overall system performance).
1) Right-click My Computer/Properties
2) Click Performance
3) Click Virtual Memory
4) Click "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings"
5) Set Minimum and Maximum to be the same number (3 times the amount of RAM is a good rule of thumb)
- for example, if he has 64mb of ram, set both Min and Max to 3*64= "196" (but first make sure he has at least 196+50=250mb free on C:.
6) Click OK,OK and let the computer reboot, then try the Defrag again.
Hope this made sense 8-)
Jon
FixN, how are you making out with this?
Dennis
Dennis
ASKER
The holidays has me swamped! I am trying to get a day when I can go over to my friends house and apply some of these "comments" from dew, johnny6, and jsexton. Yall bare with me. My friend and I both work shift work and of course we work opposite shifts. Hopefully soon I can get with my friend and check it out for myself. Sorry for the delay. I will keep yall posted.
ASKER
Talked to my friend, he said that the Task Scheduler is doing the defrag with no problems. He didn't know it was setup to defrag automatically. Apparently its ok now but I am going over to his house in 3 days to check it out myself.
ASKER
I made it to my friends house. Task Scheduler was not setup like he had thought. I did a clean out like suggested, disabled some programs that was running in the background, ran scandisk and defrag without any problems.
Great FixN, glad to hear it!
John