How can I defrag a Windows 98 system?
June 18, 2004 6:52 AM   Subscribe

Turn the clock back, gentlemen! I need to defrag a Windows 98 system. Defrag keeps restarting because something else is writing to the hard drive. My problem: I can't figure out what it is. I've tried process-monitoring programs like WinKey to kill all non-integral processes, to no avail. Suggestions? Perhaps a DOS defragger that supports long filenames and FAT32?
posted by DrJohnEvans to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)
 
I'm not too sure about a DOS defragger that will do it, but I remember that Norton SpeedDisk can take an exclusive lock the drive so that other processes don't interrupt it. Maybe you can scrounge around the bargain bins for a copy of Norton Utilities of the appropriate vintage?
posted by majick at 7:02 AM on June 18, 2004


What majick said about the vintage Norton. You probably want to steer clear of an old version of DOS defreg, however.

Also, you could try to track down the running process with Process Explorer, as mentioned here.
posted by SteveInMaine at 7:08 AM on June 18, 2004


Restarting in Safe mode seems to do the trick for me.
posted by Jeanne at 7:11 AM on June 18, 2004


Response by poster: Yeah, a little pre-question Googling pointed out the dangers of the Microsoft-provided DOS defrag.exe. There's also a version that supporst LFN but not FAT32, apparently.

I'll keep an eye out for the vintage Norton (finally gives me an excuse to give in to the bargain bin urge), and I'll give Process Explorer a try; it might be able to tell me something that WinKey couldn't.

Jeanne: already tried that, still didn't work. It's a pretty screwed-up system, I'm thinking.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 7:14 AM on June 18, 2004


Also, if you have a second, more sane machine (or a friend with one), you may be able to mount the hard disk with it and use its defrag facilities. It doesn't even need to be similarly ancient: NT5 and NT5.1 both support FAT32 volumes and have a passable, though far from excellent, built-in defrag.
posted by majick at 7:20 AM on June 18, 2004


something that i remember when running the defrag on 98 was that if the screen saver came on, it would halt the defrag and then restart once movement was made. turning off the screen saver and such made it able to run clear through. this might not be your exact problem, but it could be something similarly simple that is making the process complicated.
posted by chrisroberts at 7:54 AM on June 18, 2004


Via Esmeralda in #mefi, who has no account yet:
  1. Turn off screensaver and energy saving features.
  2. Mute all in the volume options.
  3. 3. If you have a microphone, unplug it.
  4. 4. If you have cable/dsl, unplug it.
  5. 5. After doing all of the above, run defrag.

posted by brownpau at 8:28 AM on June 18, 2004


I also remember having to turn screensaver off to defrag. Ctrl Alt Del and ending everything besides explorer.exe and systray.exe before you start might help.
posted by Orange Goblin at 8:47 AM on June 18, 2004


A more pertinent question, perhaps, is: why do you "need" to defrag at all?

As far as I can tell, all defragging does is allow you to defrag faster next time.
posted by ChasFile at 8:50 AM on June 18, 2004


> # 4. If you have cable/dsl, unplug it.

#4.5 open the process list (ctrl-alt-del) and manually kill everything except explorer

> # 5. After doing all of the above, run defrag.

And even then, I recall from my days as a PC tech, you'll run into win98 machines that keep hitting the HD for some reason. On such machines even Norton defrag keeps restarting. Nothing to do on these except let defrag run all night. It does make a little progress on each attempt, and finally gets the job done.
posted by jfuller at 9:02 AM on June 18, 2004


Turn off everything and reboot first (details).
posted by pmurray63 at 10:48 AM on June 18, 2004


Response by poster: Thanks, everybody, for all the little tips which, if combined properly, may be enough to get things working. I'll give it a shot this weekend.

pmurray63: DEFRAG.EXE /ALL sounds very intriguing. Thanks for the link!
posted by DrJohnEvans at 12:39 PM on June 18, 2004


I've seen systems where defrag restarted when you moved the mouse.
posted by reynaert at 7:25 PM on June 18, 2004


The only way I was able to solve this problem was to reformat and upgradee to XP, which I guess doesn't answer your question, but it got me to upgrade :P
posted by page404 at 7:27 PM on June 18, 2004


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