"The connection to the defragmenter engine has been lost. Restart defragmenation."

[Ron R]

I have Win XP Home in its own partition C: along with an extended partition
E: on an 80gig HDD. When selecting "Analyze" or "Defragment" on Disk
Defragmenter the error msg "The connection to the defragmenter engine has
been lost. Restart defragmentation." appears. Restarting it doesn't make any
difference. It will defragment the E: partition just fine. I've run chkdsk
/f at bootup and no errors were found.
Any ideas?
Ron R

 

[Galen]

In Ron R <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

I have Win XP Home in its own partition C: along with an extended
partition E: on an 80gig HDD. When selecting "Analyze" or
"Defragment" on Disk Defragmenter the error msg "The connection to
the defragmenter engine has been lost. Restart defragmentation."
appears. Restarting it doesn't make any difference. It will
defragment the E: partition just fine. I've run chkdsk /f at bootup
and no errors were found. Any ideas?
Ron R

Did you install a third party defrag tool such as O&O or PerfectDisk? That
should be (defrag.exe) a protected OS file so start > run > type "sfc
/scannow" without the quotes > insert the CD when asked > and allow it to
run while you get something to eat. That *might* take care of it.


--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the
furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the
lumber-room of his library where he can get it if he wants it."

Sherlock Holmes

 

[Ron R]

Thanks Galen, but no joy.
No third party defrags have been used. Ran the sfc command you suggested
anyway, rebooted, and tried to defrag C; again and got the same error msg.
Tried E: (data partition) and the defrag ran fine. Really weird.
Any other ideas?

Ron R

 

[Galen]

In Ron R <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Thanks Galen, but no joy.
No third party defrags have been used. Ran the sfc command you
suggested anyway, rebooted, and tried to defrag C; again and got the
same error msg. Tried E: (data partition) and the defrag ran fine.
Really weird. Any other ideas?

Ron R

Any other ideas? Hmm... No? Yes but no? Third party defrag tools often have
the capacity to alter the way the MMC works and that's likely the reasoning.
An uninstall of those tools might do the trick. There's an off-chance that
this is malware related but a search doesn't show too much for that being a
specific symptom of anything too recent actually. You can always scan and
see if you'd like:

Malware Cleaning:
http://kgiii.info/windows/all/general/malwarefix.html

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the
furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the
lumber-room of his library where he can get it if he wants it."

Sherlock Holmes

 

[Ron R]

Response is at bottom....

In Ron R <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:


Any other ideas? Hmm... No? Yes but no? Third party defrag tools often
have the capacity to alter the way the MMC works and that's likely the
reasoning. An uninstall of those tools might do the trick. There's an
off-chance that this is malware related but a search doesn't show too much
for that being a specific symptom of anything too recent actually. You can
always scan and see if you'd like:

Malware Cleaning:
http://kgiii.info/windows/all/general/malwarefix.html

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the
furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the
lumber-room of his library where he can get it if he wants it."

Sherlock Holmes

Thanks for your efforts Galen. I've tried googling also.
I have never installed any third party defrag software on this OS. This a
fresh XP Home install on a new PC build. In fact no application software
other than what comes with XP and the MOBO drivers has been installed. The
only reason for attempting to run defrag this early in the life of the
installation was to make a tidy image of this basic install to DVD for quick
emergency restore purposes using BootIt. I don't absolutely positively have
to defrag it but guess it's a good thing I tried. At least now I know
there's a problem. May just have to start over and reinstall XP.
Thanks also for the link to G3, excellent site. It's a keeper.

Regard's,
Ron R

 

[Galen]

In Ron R <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Response is at bottom....



Thanks for your efforts Galen. I've tried googling also.
I have never installed any third party defrag software on this OS.
This a fresh XP Home install on a new PC build. In fact no
application software other than what comes with XP and the MOBO
drivers has been installed. The only reason for attempting to run
defrag this early in the life of the installation was to make a tidy
image of this basic install to DVD for quick emergency restore
purposes using BootIt. I don't absolutely positively have to defrag
it but guess it's a good thing I tried. At least now I know there's a
problem. May just have to start over and reinstall XP. Thanks also for the
link to G3, excellent site. It's a keeper.

Regard's,
Ron R

Well, is this FAT32 or NTFS formatting we're working with here? Have you
tried in safe mode? Is there maybe something running in the background that
is preventing it?

Try this?

Start button
Click Run
Type "cmd" without the quotes
Press Enter
In the new window type "defrag C: -v" without the quotes
Press Enter

Does that roll through it?

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the
furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the
lumber-room of his library where he can get it if he wants it."

Sherlock Holmes

 

[Ron R]

In Ron R <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:


Well, is this FAT32 or NTFS formatting we're working with here? Have you
tried in safe mode? Is there maybe something running in the background
that is preventing it?

Try this?

Start button
Click Run
Type "cmd" without the quotes
Press Enter
In the new window type "defrag C: -v" without the quotes
Press Enter

Does that roll through it?

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the
furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the
lumber-room of his library where he can get it if he wants it."

Sherlock Holmes

It's a FAT32 partition. Task Manager doesn't show any applications running.
Wouldn't run in safe mode from the run command you provided. Guess I'll just
have to reinstall the OS.
Thanks for your help Galen.

Ron R

 

[Galen]

In Ron R <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

It's a FAT32 partition. Task Manager doesn't show any applications
running. Wouldn't run in safe mode from the run command you provided.
Guess I'll just have to reinstall the OS.
Thanks for your help Galen.

Ron R

Ron,

I do hope that I'm not too late but before you try a complete reinstall a
repair installation might do the trick. I really, after a great deal of
searching and how ever many days we spent on it, have absolutely no idea.
It's likely a problem that I've come across before but haven't ever figured
out how to fix. There's been some odd problems (for no reason it seems) for
MMC snap-ins to simply not work properly. About three, or so, months ago I
spent a good couple of weeks in private email trying to figure out why one
of the snap-ins wouldn't function completely. I'm at a loss for which one it
was but it was a completely odd situation and nothing listed, nothing in the
knowledge base, and nothing writen online by any of our search terms
revealed a solution that worked. Not for lack of trying but simply because
it was either very rare or there was no fix ever found? Anyhow, a repair
installation is easier...

Repair Installation of XP :
http://kgiii.info/windows/XP/general/xprepair.html

(That is if the site's not going to keep breaking today - my host's are
dealing with hardware issues it seems.)

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the
furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the
lumber-room of his library where he can get it if he wants it."

Sherlock Holmes