I have been trying to defrag my hard drive. I knew how to do it with Windows ME but I don't know how to do it with XP. I tried it this morning and it ran for 3 hours before it finally clicked that the defragging kept restarting! :loopy:

Start - all programs - accsesaries - system tools - Defrag icon :thumbsup:

But sometime you need to do a disk clean as well.....that might be the problem

Are you doing other stuff while defragging in the backgound? I'm guessing it might be that writing to the disk is causing it to restart the analyzing & defragging proces over and over. I usually leave the machine well alone while it defrags and it works fine for me.

Did you turn off your screensaver? Defrag usually keeps restarting because another program which is running in the background does something. Turn off as many things as you can (screensaver, powersaving, anti-virus, firewall), disconnect from the internet, then run defrag again and don't do anything else with your PC till it's done.

Hope this helps.

I have been trying to defrag my hard drive. I knew how to do it with Windows ME but I don't know how to do it with XP. I tried it this morning and it ran for 3 hours before it finally clicked that the defragging kept restarting! :loopy:

Hiya parcher :)

My advice for a better defrag is to reboot your computer in Safe mode (tap f8 repeatedly while booting up. When the boot screen appears, select Safe Mode).
Then perform a standard defrag. You may need to perform a disk clean up as well as stated above :)

If you want a really good defrag you can disable the virtual memory before rebooting as well. Although doing that isn't that important.

Once your defrag has finished, go back and run it a couple more times. It will only take a few minutes this time but there are always a couple of files it finds the 2nd and 3rd time :wink:

Of course I found the defrag thing in system tools! That bit was simple - it was exactly where it was supposed to be! I admit that I didn't remember to switch off the screensaver though, but in my defence, I did do it in Safe mode and I definitely left the thing well alone (I have made that mistake before). Maybe it wasn't restarting then - perhaps it was just taking a horrendously long time. Perhaps I ought to leave it overnight?

also try ctrl alt delete and close as much crap as you can in task manager
also right click on things in the task bar and close em specially anti virus

Right, I will have another bash tonight! Eight hours ought to be enough for it to do its thing!

One other thing to bear in mind is that the drive/partition that you are defragging has at least 15 percent free space on it, otherwise the defrag will fail.

Is it FAT32 or NTFS?
I usePerfectDisk (http://www.raxco.com/products/perfectdisk2k/)