disk defragmenter hangs

[LaphLaw]

I have a recently bought emachines t3065, and I haven't had any
problems w/ the disk defragmenter until now. Admittedly, the drive
I'm trying to format is quite large (100 GB capacity; about 50% used),
but that didn't matter before.

What happened was I was defragging it, and I was on the Internet in
the background. After about 28% completed, it just didn't move. The
computer didn't freeze or anything, but it just stopped functioning.
So I had to cancel it (which can't be good, in the middle of
defragging).

Later I tried doing it again, but that time it only got to about 15%
and it stopped.

Any suggestions?

thanks

 

[S.Sengupta]

Hello,
you disable antivirus/firwall what ever may be running in the background
before strating the disk defragmentation.
Analyze volumes before defragmenting them. After analyzing a volume, a
dialog box tells you the percentage of fragmented files and folders on
the volume and recommends whether to defragment the volume.
A volume must have at least 15% free space for Disk Defragmenter to
completely and adequately defragment it.If a volume has less than 15%
free space, Disk Defragmenter will only partially defragment it. To
increase the free space on a volume, delete unneeded files or move them
to another disk.
If there is still problem then you must chkdsk the volume to know if
there is anything wrong there.In that case to fix errors,you must
include the /f parameter.

regards,
ssg MS-MVP
pronetworks.org

 

[LaphLaw]

Well, when I first defragged it, I did analyze it first, and it told
me to defrag it. That's when it stopped at 28%. The second time, it
told me I didn't need to -- though I did it anyway. It didn't finish
the second time either. however, I have defragged a drive in the past
where it said that I didn't need to, and it finished. In other words,
it shouldn't hurt the drive to defrag it even though it doesn't need
it -- right?

 

[Alias]

Well, when I first defragged it, I did analyze it first, and it told
me to defrag it. That's when it stopped at 28%. The second time, it
told me I didn't need to -- though I did it anyway. It didn't finish
the second time either. however, I have defragged a drive in the past
where it said that I didn't need to, and it finished. In other words,
it shouldn't hurt the drive to defrag it even though it doesn't need
it -- right?

Right. Do it again in Safe Mode and see if it doesn't finish. Hit F8 on boot
up to get into Safe Mode. If you've never gone to Safe Mode with XP, know
that it's normal to take a long time to get there.

Alias