Very slow defrag

[Guest]

Recently upgraded from W98 to WXP Professional. When I attempt to defrag C:
the process is excedingly slow. I ran disk clean up then chkdsk which found
no errors. I show 52% free space. When I attempted to defrag I started the
program, left it running and came back 5 1/2 hours later and it was at only
37% complete "compacting files". Any ideas what can be causing this slowness
and what can I do about it. I have rebooted the computer a couple of times
and restarted defrag and it always grinds to a halt at the point of
"compacting".

 

[Burgy]

I used to defrag in safe mode with Win98. I was doing the same in XP, but
the last time, I ran into the same thing as you describe. I am on cable
(rr), so I turned off my modem, then shut down all virus programs,
firewalls, and all programs running in the background plus screen savers
and wall paper and then ran defrag in normal mode.
This worked for me, hope it helps.

 

[Guest]

I disconnected my DSL connection, shut down all running programs, virus
scanner and screensaver down prior to running defrag but had the problem
anyway.

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

I disconnected my DSL connection, shut down all running programs,
virus scanner and screensaver down prior to running defrag but had
the problem anyway.

I ditched the native defragmentation tool years ago - I use Raxco Perfect
Disk (www.raxco.com) - it will defrag my 300GB secondary drive in under an
hour and it doesn't need oodles of free space in order to run - in fact, I
only have 1GB free on my D partition (which is less than 1%) and it defrags
that no problem. Windows defrag requires at least 15% free space in order to
run. You can also schedule it - I run it once a week at 2am, no need to
bother about it! No need to disable anything, or boot to safe mode. You can
download a 30-day fully functional trial. It costs £30 to register and it's
worth every penny. It will even defrag your boot sector files.

 

[Guest]

Check your file system.

I had a simliar problem which I cured.
My file system was FAT32, which xp should really convert to NTFS.
I did this "manually" using the "convert" program supplied by microsoft with
xp.

Defragmenter runs really well now.
Hope this helps.

 

[Guest]

Thanks! I believe that solved my problem. My file system was also FAT32. I
ran the Convert.exe program and converted them to NTFS. After the conversion
I ran defrag again. I'm not sure how long it actually took but I left the
computer running for a couple of hours and when I came back it had finished
defragging.

 

[Guest]

This may be a stupid question but... when I convert am I going to have to
reinstall all my software again???

and how do I access this convert.exe - can I do it through the "run"
command? Do I have to do it from a dos prompt - any help would be appreciated
as this slow defrag drives me nuts... it's a new laptop and has 80% free...
so it is not that!

Thanks