Discussion Locked

defragmentation failure

0 helpful
16 replies
Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
what could be the problem with a standard harddrive - (WDC, Maxtor, quantum) that fails 2 complet defragmentation? starts over & over & over again, gets up to 10% and statrs over again, never completing. I've reset the power settings / scr saver notto interfere, and the same thing happens. normal HD primary partition nothing special, just will not complete defrag but will complete scandisk. how can I correct this problem and defrag my harddrive?

16 replies

by ann777

Boot to safemode and run defragmentation from there.

Do you have anti-virus software installed? If yes, you should also disable it.

If you are connected to a network, you might also want to reboot without logging into the network, disableall active programs and run defrag again.

Anything that writes to the hdd will cause defrag to start all over.

by ann777

Also if you have a multifunction printer, you need to disable it temporarily as well... because it too polls Windows for activity.

by mrbill357

do a CTRL ATL DEL and stop all other processes. The problem is a program running in the background. Everytime it starts, it has to restart defrag. If you are working on numerous machines, shutting down a couple programs at a time will let you know which ones interfere with the process and save you time when you work on other machines.

by kcmeister

Run defrag in safe mode. nothing to interfere. good idea to run scandisk in safe mode, too. goes faster. when pc first boots, press F8 key repeatedly about once a second, a start up menu will appear. choose safe mode. will look real ugly. rundefrag there.
kcmeister

by jbuttigieg

Before you run the defrag command press control alt del and remove all the tasks except the Explorer and Systray by highlighting each task and choose end task for every open task listed. These tasks would change the contents of the Harddisk and causes the defrag process to start again. Leaving only explorer and Systray in the task list reduces the possiblity and the defrag process does not start again at any time. Hope thhis will solve your problem.

James

by bsj_molena

The reason that this is happening is because you have other programs that are running in the background. Every time one of them writes to the hard drive, defrag has to start over. The above answer is correct. But here is how to close the programs running on your computer. Press the ALT+CTRL+Delete keys at the same time. This will bring up a close program window. It will list all the programs running on your computer, many you might not have even know about. Click on the name of a program,then click the end task button. Do this until everything is closed EXCEPT explorer and systray. After you do that, run defrag and it should finish. Hope this works for you.

by intruzion

I've had the same problem before and the cause is a hard disk error usually from damaged data. It can also occur from physical damage but it happens rarely. To fix the problem do the following:

1. Open My Computer and right-click the drive then select properties.
2. Select the Tools Tab. In the Error-Checking section, click Check Now.
3. In the Check Disk Dialog MAKE SURE you specify that you want file system errors to be fixed automatically and that you want to scan for and attempt to recover bad sectors on the disk. Click start when your done.

This will take a little while but when it's done it will generate a report telling you if there were any errors and that they were fixed. Then you can defragment and it should work fine.

by nomadss1

Do you have hidden spyware or monitoring programs running in stealth mode if there set to logging mode could it possibly be rewritting into the log. try pressing crtl+alt+shift+m and see if a popup asks for a password sometimes the m can be changed to another key try a few combos.If you do find a spy check logs to see when it was added and what name was changed to delete in registry to eliminate spy.

This discussion is closed to new replies.