Computer won't defrag...

[SomethingBig]

I know how to defragment. I ran ScanDizk to fix any and all errors on my C Drive, but each time my disk defragmenter defrags 80% of the files in my C Drive, it says that the files change, or something, then starts all over. I'm currently using Windows 98. Help, plz?

[Yamaneko]

That used to happen when I used ME. I reformatted and it fixed the problem. It might be Windows. There could be inconsistencies in the partition you're trying to defrag. Could be a virus. Who knows?

[Dr Unne]

I don't think defragging really matters anyways.

[o_O]

Use ctrl + alt + del to end all tasks but Systray and Explorer. Well, you could end Explorer if you wanted, it may even help. Anyway, it's possible that it restarts because something is writing to the hard disk, so try running a defrag with only systray and explorer running, if you haven't already. :p

[SomethingBig]

Okay, I'll try that.

Unne, it helped last time my computer was slow. And I checked the files in my C Drive and I'd say at least 40% of the files are fragmented.

[crono_logical]

Using CTRL-ALT-DEL is one way to help, yeah. The reason it restarts is because something's gone and changed some file on the disk, so the defragger is forced to restart again. Sometimes though, it's Windows itself doing that, so you're kind of stuck, and need to somehow defrag it while Windows isn't running, such as during boot time instead.

Defragging will give you noticable performance boosts if you happen to stick everything (all data) on a single drive, so basically mixing Windows, programs, temp files, and your own files and documents, and everything else. If you're clever with partitioning though and seperate everything, you should rarely have to defrag, if ever, to see a large performance boost. I never defrag my drives, partly because I don't need to because of this seperation, and partly because it'd take too long on such large drives anyway :p

[SomethingBig]

How do I go about defragging while windows is booting?

[crono_logical]

For Win98, I can't remember :D