Laptop crashes when I try to defragment it.

[Guest]

I recently upgraded my IBM laptop to Windows XP professional from Win98 and
repartitioned the hard drive. I also recently converted the hard drive to
FAT32 from FAT (is 32 the right number? You know what I mean anyway). It is
now very very slow and obviously heavily fragmented. When I try to defrag it
crashes every time. It finishes analyzing and then as soon as it reaches 1%
of the defrag, it just seizes up. No activity at all.

 

[John John]

How much free space do you have on the drive? In any case, the laptop
is probably too weak or to run Windows XP, what are the specs on it?
While file fragmentation can have a negative impact on performance this
is usually only marginal.

John

 

[Guest]

I have plenty of free space, and the laptop is not too weak. It has 290MB
RAM, about 10gb free hard disk from 20gb. It has reached a similar state
before and a defrag made it a new machine. I just can't run the defrag. I
already removed all unneccessary programmes etc.

 

[John John]

Do a disk cleanup and remove all temp files, including the IE cache.
Corrupt files in these folders can cause defragmenter hiccups.

John