I have tried to defragment my hard drive . It never seems to get to the end as the message ' disc contents changed, restarting' comes on every few minutes. Ive been told this is ususally an indication that a programme is running in the background. Ive tried scandisk to fix the errors if there are any but that never seems to finish either. Ive shut all the progs that I think are still running while Im off-line, but how do I find out what may be running in the background that Im not aware of. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

have you tried defragging in safe mode?

How to Start a Windows 98-Based Computer in Safe Mode

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/180902

Brain Damage: Thanks for the suggestion I'll try that and see what happens.

I used to have a lot of grief defragging my Win 98 PC. Someone gave me this idea (sorry, can't recall the name). Basically, you do a preliminary error check in DOS mode, then defrag in Safe Mode with error checking turned off.
I recommend doing a Disk Cleanup as a preliminary, then . . .

1. Restart and come up in DOS mode.
2. At the DOS prompt, type the following:

scandisk /all /autofix /nosave /nosummary /surface [ENTER]

3. After that finishes, you will start Windows in Safe Mode. Simply type :

win /d:m [ENTER]

4. Now, run defrag, but without "Check disk for errors" checked.

It's all faster and less troublesome than the usual way. It avoids restarts because of screen savers or other programs running in the background.

I put the following batch file in my C:\DOS directory, named DiscScan.BAT. When I come up in DOS mode I just run it to accomplish Step 2 and remind me of the rest. Text of DiscScan.BAT . . .

rem first, do a cleanup!!
scandisk /all /autofix /nosave /nosummary /surface
rem win /d:m
rem then defrag without Check disk for error checked

Thanks a lot ProfessorM, I'll give that a try. It seems like a clever idea to get round my problem. I'll let you know if it works forme.

Might be a good idea if you're using any windows based ops.

Diskeeper offer a free defrag app called Diskeeper Lite v7.0.418

You can find various mirrors -->> _http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1207 copy link without underscore and paste into browser for mirrors.

Thank you to all who have helped me to defrag my hdd, I tried ProfessorM's method and it finally got there. Thank you all again. Stron.

I'm happy that it worked.


I should point out that one of the PC magazines offered a free utility named "EndItAll" that would stop all but the essential Win 98 processes so that you could scan and degrag in peace.

That might also work, but I preferred the two-step process that I outlined above.

ProfessorM. It worked like a charm. Took a while the first time because I hadnt been able to defrag for months but now back to a normal once a week no problem!! Thanks again...

Thread closed due to problem resolution. Thanks to the contributing members. ;>)