Billy,
I don't know if I'm having the same problem you are or
not... for me defrag may take a very long time to load, (5
to 30 minutes) and then doesn't work... I have had defrag
work when in a 'safe boot'... I've posted a similar
question (copied below):
I'm running a Dell 8200 (80 Gig Disk with over 60 Gig
free; half Gig of memory) under Win2K. Most applications
(Word, IE, games, etc) are very responsive; some
applications such as W2K defrag, SmartPanel (Epson's
scanner interface) will take an extreamly long time to
load (5 to 20 minutes). When Defrag eventually loads it
does not function properly, SmartPanel does work properly
when it eventually loads.
I have done the standard tuning steps, CPU is almost
allways over 90% free, checked for disk errors, booted to
safe mode and successfully completed defrag... checked
registry for errors (by running TuneUp Utilities).
I don't know if this is related, however while in the Disk
Management component of Computer Management I notice an 31
MB Unmounted FAT volume (marked as Healthy EISA
Configuration) that I didn't expect. This is not a dual
boot system. I run Norton Antivirus 2002 with Autoprotect
enabled, and full system scans scheduled every other night
(the logs show successful completion with no virus found).
Any help would be appreciated. Mostly this is an annoyance
as almost all work on the machine can be done (I can
access the scanner via other applications fine).
Thanks in advance,
John