Defrag problem on C Partion after format and clean install of XP Pro SP2

[Don]

I seem to have an issue, that is a first for me.
I just put a new EVGA 780i mb in on Friday, and ended up having to format
and clean install XP Pro SP2. I also have gotten all my udpates post SP2.

I have two sata hard drives, each with 3 partitions.
My system appears to be running rock solid. Thought I would go in and defrag
my C partition in Windows XP.
Very, very slow. The cpu kept stalling, then starting, I could see this in
task manager under performance tab. So, before my reformat I had Diskeeper
10, from Executive Software, 2005 version I believe. I liked the program, so
went ahead and purchased the new version, Diskeeper 2008 Home Version.
Installed it, and tried again.
Same issue, as with the built in windows defrag, I let the thing run over
two hours, before finally shutting my system down. It had gotten to app 80%
complete, but again, the constant stalls and starts of the cpu was
unbelievable.
Now here's the catch, all my other partitions, including the other two on
the same drive that C is on, defragment just fine and in a matter of a very
few minutes, no stalling and starting of the cpu.

I have never seen anything like this before, and while I am sure not an
issue with the new 780i, thought some of you being pretty knowledgeable,
might have seen this before and have a clue on what is going on?

Any tips here would be greatly appreciated.




Thanks,

 

[Gerry]

Don

Try running HD Tune(freeware).

Download and run it and see what it turns up.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive
letter and then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard )
and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message. You can also do a full
surface scan with HD Tune.

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy. Do this before running Disk Defragmenter as it
is more informative.

The Microsoft Disk Defragmenter and Diskeeper I think work differently
so one works against the other.

Did you run Disk CleanUp before defragmenting. Running either
defragmenter in safe mode might help.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I seem to have an issue, that is a first for me.
I just put a new EVGA 780i mb in on Friday, and ended up having to format
and clean install XP Pro SP2. I also have gotten all my udpates post SP2.

I have two sata hard drives, each with 3 partitions.
My system appears to be running rock solid. Thought I would go in and
defrag my C partition in Windows XP.
Very, very slow. The cpu kept stalling,

What exactly do you mean by "stalling"?

then starting, I could see this in task manager under performance tab.

Download and run Process Explorer. Take a few minutes to see how it works
and what it's displaying, then start up the defragmenter again with PE laid
out to show what's taking CPU cycles.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

That should give you a firmer grasp on what is really going on.

HTH
-pk

 

[AJR]

Don - you do not provide info regarding HD capacity. Regarding
"...defragment just fine and in a matter of a very few minutes,..." - would
have to be extremely small - defrag takes time.

Today's sizable HDs do take "hours" to defrag and "...The cpu kept stalling,
then starting,..." would be normal action.

 

[Gerry]

AJR

Most likely did not clean up after install and before running Disk
Defragmenter.


~~~~


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Don]

Gerry,

Thanks for the tip on HD Tune, I will check it out when I can.

Yes, I ran disk cleanup. I will give safe mode a try.
Again, it only does this on my C Partition, none of the others.

 

[Don]

What exactly do you mean by "stalling"?

By stalling, I mean the cpu basically appears to freeze. Mouse will not
move. With the performance monitor, in task manager open, you can see the
progress bar just freeze for a minute or so, then starts up again.

Download and run Process Explorer. Take a few minutes to see how it
works and what it's displaying, then start up the defragmenter again with
PE laid out to show what's taking CPU cycles.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Thanks, I will check it out.

 

[Don]

My C partition, is 20 gb, with only app 6 gb of data on it right now.
Prior to my reformatting and installing XP Pro clean, I could defrag it in
minutes ( I defrag about once a month ).

Now, C is doing this, I basically stopped it after over 2 hours.

Thanks,



--
Don

Don - you do not provide info regarding HD capacity. Regarding
"...defragment just fine and in a matter of a very few minutes,..." -
would have to be extremely small - defrag takes time.

Today's sizable HDs do take "hours" to defrag and "...The cpu kept
stalling, then starting,..." would be normal action.

 

[Don]

Yes, I ran disc cleanup. However, I do have a lot of files in my recycle
bin, programs downloaded and installed, then the downloaded files deleted,
etc.

I will clean out the recycle bin as well before trying again.

Thanks,

 

[Poprivet`]

My C partition, is 20 gb, with only app 6 gb of data
on
it right now. Prior to my reformatting and installing
XP
Pro clean, I could defrag it in minutes ( I defrag
about
once a month ).
Now, C is doing this, I basically stopped it after
over 2
hours.
Thanks,

If fragmentation is bad enough, and especially if
things like Restore points are using Gigs of space (not
counted) and your page file is set large (windows
should controls its size), where the partition is
located and a few dozen other things could make the
first defrag take a long time.
IMO 2 hours wasn't enough time even for your small
(by today's standards) size.
IIRC correctly you stopped it at 80% some some such
number and have stopped it more than once. THAT very
likely really intensified the fragmentation on the
drive a huge amount.
If you analyze the drive before fragmenting, I'll
bet it gives you a very high % of fragmented files.
You started with a fragmented disck because you had
just installed windows. Then IMO you substantially
increased the frgamentation by starting and stopping
the defrags.

I suggest:
Before bed or at least after the last day's use of the
computer:
-- Do a Disk Cleanup. Start, Programs, Accessories,
System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Let it do everything. It
might take quite awhile to run. Let it complete.
-- Restart. Better yet, do a cold boot after power
has been off for over a minute.
-- Immediately start the defragger.
-- Go to bed, whatever.
-- In the morning, see if it's still running. I'll
bet it won't be; it'll be finished.
-- Restart
-- Defrag it again: This time it should only take an
hour or two at most, but IF it's progressing, even very
slowly, let it complete!
-- Restart. Analyze the fragmentation. If it still
suggests you defrag, do so yet again.
-- You might want to defrag again just for GPs even if
it says you don't have to, if there is say more than
10% fragmentation indicated.
-- After that or maybe one or two more times, you
should be back where you started from.

It might sound counter-intuitive to do so many defrags,
but your interrupting defrags left your data scattered
all over the place while it was making room to put
things in order. When the fragmentation is bad enough,
the application simply cannot handle all of the
fragmentation.
I have only ever had to defrag 3 times once on one
machine, to get the frragmentation down to under 3% but
you might have a bigger mess there. Especially if you
don't have a lot of memory, it can make things take
longer too.
Patience and perseverence. First defrag might take
hours. Second I would expect much shorter, less than
an hour, but let it run until it's done or
fragmentation will go wild on you again. Next time
should be the last time, and be pretty fast relatively
speaking, but keep track of the amount of
fragmentation.
Also note that there are some files that can not be
defragmented this way, like your page file, so complete
defrag might not be possible, depending on how/when
those unmovable files were created.

HTH,

Pop`

 

[Don]

--
Don

Patience and perseverence. First defrag might take hours. Second I
would expect much shorter, less than an hour, but let it run until it's
done or fragmentation will go wild on you again. Next time should be the
last time, and be pretty fast relatively speaking, but keep track of the
amount of fragmentation.
Also note that there are some files that can not be defragmented this
way, like your page file, so complete defrag might not be possible,
depending on how/when those unmovable files were created.

HTH,

Thanks Pop, I did manage to let it finish today, took about 2.5 hours.
I just have never seen this before, where the system basically freezes for a
few minutes and then starts back. By system freezing, I mean cannot even
move the mouse or anything.
I have been defragging in XP Pro, since I first got it shortly after
release, and have never seen this type of behaviour. I do not get these
freezes, while defragging my other partitions, two of which are on the same
drive as C. My page file, is 100 mb on C, then I have a page file on another
drive, another partition, starting at 100 mb with max of 1.5gb.


I did analyze before this last defrag, and it was only between 1-2%
fragmented. I still think something not quite right there, but at least it
finished this time, we'll see how it does the next,and I will certainly take
your good advice prior to doing it
the next time.


Many thanks for the good feedback,



Don

 

[Don]

--
Don




Thanks Pop, I did manage to let it finish today, took about 2.5 hours.
I just have never seen this before, where the system basically freezes for
a few minutes and then starts back. By system freezing, I mean cannot even
move the mouse or anything.
I have been defragging in XP Pro, since I first got it shortly after
release, and have never seen this type of behaviour. I do not get these
freezes, while defragging my other partitions, two of which are on the
same drive as C. My page file, is 100 mb on C, then I have a page file on
another drive, another partition, starting at 100 mb with max of 1.5gb.


I did analyze before this last defrag, and it was only between 1-2%
fragmented. I still think something not quite right there, but at least it
finished this time, we'll see how it does the next,and I will certainly
take your good advice prior to doing it
the next time.


Many thanks for the good feedback,

Hey gang, just thought I would report back, finally found out - the hard
way, why it was having such a problem defragging the C partition.
At the same time, I had started getting blue screens, after my system had
been idle for a few minutes. I checked event viewer, and it was reporting my
primary drive, that C was on, as being faulty, and failure would be likely.
I scheduled a chkdsk /r, and that was all she wrote after that, chkdsk hung
up and eventually gave me a " windows hard error ". System would not even
boot after that.

Purchased a new drive, and got everything reinstalled. She is purring along
nicely now, no blue screens, defrag working as it should.

I was getting signs, the hard drive was failing, the defrag issue being one
of them, and just did not recognize them for what they were. I got to learn
to look at event viewer quicker, when these types of things start to
happen...

 

[Gerry]

Don

A failing hard drive was always on the cards. The first words I posted
to you "Try running HD Tune(freeware)."

Thanks for reporting the outcome.


--
Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Don]

Yep, and I should have heeded that Gerry, thanks!

 

[Onsokumaru]

Speedfan is good also. It has a SMART tab which allows you to compares your
drives SMART data with other users over the internet, along with some
description as to what's ok to ignore and what's critical.

Don

A failing hard drive was always on the cards. The first words I posted to
you "Try running HD Tune(freeware)."

Thanks for reporting the outcome.


--
Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<snip>

 

[Don]

Good to know, I have speedfan and use it primarily to view fan speeds/temps.

Thanks,