Disk Defragmenter will not work among other things

[ABC Computer]

Here's the deal... I've got an XP Pro client that has the following symptoms.

Disk Defragmentor could not start error when trying to defragment.

Disk drives (DVD & CDRW) will not read/start when disk is inserted (but will
read if the computer is booted with the disk inserted)

USB drives will not recognize..."Disk is not formatted. Do you want to
format it now?" (again will work if inserted before booting)

This is what I have already tried.

Repair install of windows, rerun all windows updates. SUBACL to restore
permissions to registry. Created a new administrator account and deleted the
old one. Scanned for virus/spyware, and scans clean. These seems to be some
kind of policy issue, and I've reset all the policies to default (as much as
can be done).

Other suggestions or better yet the fix?

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Rightclick the drive icon in Explorer, Properties, Tools tab.
Run Error Checking on all the drives.

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Mark L. Ferguson
..

 

[ABC Computer]

I ran chkdsk again... I did run it before also... but still no luck. anything
else?

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Another thing that stops defrag is a running app, like the screensaver or
some anti-spyware/anti-virus TSR.

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Mark L. Ferguson
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[ABC Computer]

I'm getting an error "Disk Defragmenter could not start". That is NOT the
only issue, and I believe it is related to the fact that I cannot read
CD/DVDs when inserted once XP has booted and the fact that a USB flash drive
doesn't work either unless it is inserted prior to windows booting. I said
previously that the computer scans clean of ANY viruses and spyware. Been
there done that already. Anything else that might be helpful? preferable
that has not already been tried. I've also regesiterd the DLLs for defag and
made sure that DCOM is running. So those are not the problem either.

 

[ABC Computer]

Here's another oddity that I have noticed. Any new files created are
compressed. and I cannot uncompress them. It will not let me change the
attribute. This could explain why defrag is unable to start. So how is it
fixed?