defragmenting doesn't work

i would suggest/recommend that you try executive software's diskeeper, i find it a better defrag tool than windows's own, surely microsoft didn't license diskeeper and put a version (sort of) into windows 2000 for no reason.
there are trial download, try it.
the other point to note is that while running defrag, ensure that you turn off any background program like antivirus, scheduled tasks, any disk activity during defrag would cause the defrag to re-start or stopped.

In both cases, reboot into safe mode and rerun the defrag. That will minimize the possibility of anything running that accesses the hard drive, causing defrag to keep starting over.

Something is accessing the drive which makes it start over. The worst culprit is a Microsoft program loaded by Office called "Find Fast"...one of the worst programs known to man...kill it..shoot it and hang it by the neck to rot in public view to discourgage other lousy software writters. My advice is to remove all items you can from the startup folder, hack the registry at H_Key Local Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows|Current Version\Run and remove any unnecessary programs...be careful and backup the reg before doing this. The only programs I allow to run are Norton Antivirus, Zone Alarm, Systray, Scanregw and Taskmon...of course there may be others that must run such as stillmon if you have a scanner attached. But I would be willing to bet that your main culprit is that pesky "Find Fast"

I had a similar thing happen in Windows Me, I was running scandisk, It would get almost completed, and my screensaver would start,the scandisk would start over again. So I had to turn off the screensaver,then it worked fine. So if it's not the screensaver, then some other program is running in the back ground, and acessing the drive your defraging.Therefore interrupting the process, so it keeps restarting the process.

Hi,

Click Start, Run, type msconfig, click OK.
At the Startup tab uncheck programs that load automaticlly at startup that you don't need.
The problem you have happened to me after I installed a Winamp player. Was defrag working before? Did youjust load something and now it is not? If so, that is the problem app.

T58

Hello,
My friend had similar problems. Aside from disabling the screensaver and setting the hard drive to never turn off, your problem probaly is a media application.
Winamp or windows media player. Remove them and see if it helps.

All of the above answers are potential culprits but another one is a bad sector on your hard drive most hard drive companies provide diagnostic utilities on there web site might want to try one.

Something is writing to the hard drive forcing The scanning portion of the defrag program to start over.

Using control-alt-delete end task everything except explorer and systray. Now run your defrag. This should do the trick.

Good Luck Lee

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