Defrag Trouble

[Doug Mc]

I'm trying to help a lady - several hundred miles away - who is trying to
defrag her XP system and she's having trouble. She is able to do a disk
cleanup ok but when she clicks on defrag and it begins, it only runs a few
seconds and she gets an error.

The error window is as follows:
+++++++++++++++
Title: Defragmenter
A "Big round black ball with a white X in the middle of it" appears at the
left.
Message: "The scan has been cancelled because an error occured in file
C:/windows/windowsupdate.log."
+++++++++++++++

I'm a W98SE user and I don't know ANYTHING about XP.
Can you tell me what to tell her to overcome this problem?

TIA
Doug McNeill - Dallas

 

[Jerry]

Tell her to boot into Safe Mode and try defrag from there.

 

[Doug Mc]

I tried to get her into Safe Mode but what she described was not what I see
as Safe Mode on W98.
She did tap F8 as it came up and got the choices. Said she had three
choices for Safe Mode. Is that true?
If so, should she choose "another" safe mode??

Thanks for your help.

 

[Doug Mc]

She says she has all these choices:
Choices are :
safe mode
safe mode with networking
safe mode with command prompt
Enable boot logging
enable VGA Mode
Last Know good configeration(your most recent settings that worked)
Directory Services Restore Mode
(windows Controllers only)
Debugging mode
disable auto restart on system failure
start windows normanally
reboot
return to o5 choices menue

Would any of this other stuff help?

 

[Star Fleet Admiral Q]

Hint: Best to pass this lady off to someone who "knows" WinXP, as someone
as yourself that has no XP experience and with no access to an XP machine to
review and make logical decisions, will almost certainly cause more damage
than good, even to the point a complete reinstall would be in order. WinXP
is not Win9x, a totally different animal. I'm not degrading your ability,
but without a reference point, it is hard to assist you assisting someone
else who has an OS you are not familiar with.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

http://www.google.com
Google is your "Friend"

 

[Doug Mc]

Could be. But I'm not completely at a loss. I've dealt with computers for
quite awhile and, if I can get some hints from other folks who know a system
I can learn pretty fast.
That's why I think I'm qualified to ask for assistance and pass it along.

And, if I knew someone to "pass this lady off to" I would certainly do it.
But I don't.
So, give me some help to help her!

Doug

 

[bumtracks]

start button run line cmd (to open a dos like window)
cd \ then maybe suggest chkdsk before doing booting to
Safe and running defrag from a cmd window


C:\>chkdsk /?
Checks a disk and displays a status report.
CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]]

volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
filename FAT/FAT32 only: Specifies the files to check for
fragmentation
..
/F Fixes errors on the disk.
/V On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every
file
on the disk.
On NTFS: Displays cleanup messages if any.
/R Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information
(implies /F).
/L:size NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified
number
of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays current
size.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid
(implies /F).
/I NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index
entries.
/C NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder
structure.


<<<<<<---------------------->>>>>>>>>>>>

C:\>defrag /?
Usage:
defrag <volume> [-a] [-f] [-v] [-?]
volume drive letter or mount point (d: or d:\vol\mountpoint)
-a Analyze only
-f Force defragmentation even if free space is low
-v Verbose output
-? Display this help text

C:\Documents and Settings\mike>

 

[Doug Mc]

Thanks BumTracks,
This will probably help us.
Doug

 

[Simon Hawking]

Thanks BumTracks,
This will probably help us.
Doug

I'd recommend a 3rd party defragger such as PerfectDisk 7. It'll auto
defrag, smart place files, and even defrag the pagefile and MBR - which the
in built defragger won't.

Been using it for a few months now, and the results are great.