Defrag freezes system

[pcmedic]

Anytime I start defrag my system completly freezes up. I have win98 2nd edition, pII400 with 192 megs of ram

[jad1097]

Have you tried to run scan disk first?

[RavenStandsAlone]

You should alway, always run scandisk before running defrag. Settings on scandisk should be Standard and Fix Errors. If your Defragmentation program runs into errors on the drive it halts the program. Sometimes it will give you a message about it and sometimes it will just freeze up! This is part of the fun and glory of Windoze!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Underclocked]

I would add that you should also do an occasional FULL scandisk. Right before you go to bed with nothing else running and no screensaver selected. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Chaostician]

Try Running Defrag from safemode. (F8 while the sys boots, and choose safemode) run it from there.

[bdunn]

how full is the drive. If the drive is almost full defrag will do this.

[pcmedic]

Thanks for the great replys I will try them and let you know. I will first do a complete scandisk (thourough mode) and if that does'nt do it I'll try to defgrag in safe mode

[Chaostician]

If it runs in safe mode then its a program that is running in your background in normal windows. Click "start" go to "run" and then type "msconfig". Go to the "startup" tab and disable everything execpt the "scanregistry" and "systray", reboot and run scandisk/defrag. If they run it's one of those prog's; if it doesn't then its most likely a driver problem (i.e- time to reinstall)

-Hope this helps-
-Chaostician

[Ygor]

Sometimes I have to run a thorough scandisk twice to get defrag to complete. About half the time I get the message to run a thorough scandisk the second time I can get away with running defrag on a second try.

Gives me incentive toward getting Norton Utilities...

[Dave_H]

Just to throw in my two cents. A corrupted temp file could cause a problem here too, delete all temp internet files, and the ones under C/Windows/Temp. Also, I have never had to try this one, so it is unknown to me, but I have read that a problem with
C/Windows/Applog could cause this. This is what windows uses to arrange the files so the ones you use a lot can load quicker.
It was suggested that this folder can be re-named and then restart the system, Windows will re-create the app-log folder and you can then attempt another de-frag. If it works then the re-named folder can be deleated. Note- I have never done this.
Dave

[bobcat]

I had the situation in which McAffee defragger would lock up if I was running Guard dog. Is it possible that you have some new application running in your systray and it is causing your defragger to freeze?