Running winme with an 80 gig hard drive. Windows defragmentation program doesn't seem to do a bad job, but have heard that independent defraggers are better. Any ideas? Should I go a different route or stay with good ol' Microsoft?

I am told that it is better to defrag in Safe mode or DOS [ I forget which but one of it]

Plenty of info here to drag in DOS mode. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&querytime=kAI&q=defrag+in+dos

You could try Diskeeper It can defrag a 40gig HD in about 20 mins, dont ask how it just can. search for it at www.google.com

Most of the other third party Defrag programs work better and often faster than MaxFrag .. ooops I mean Micro$oft Defrag. Just running one of them one time, and then going back to MaxFrag often helps. What helps more is deleting PCHealth and TaskMonitor from the startup of Windows ME, then deleting the PCHealth and System Tune-UP icons in Scheduled Tasks. They are useless and slow down MaxFrag and ScanDisk anyway. If you have a second diskdrive on your system that can be made bootable, place a minimum copy of Windows ME on it (I use a 2G primary partition for this) and boot the system from that drive and run Defrag of all drives from there. This allows it to defrag the system files and swap files on your first drive. I go a lot farther. I have a complex batch file that uses XXCOPY to backup the first drive (running from the second) and then deletes and restores the first drive in such a way that it is defraged much better than most defrag programs. Then Defrag runs a lot faster for a few weeks. The easy way to go is buy one of the Defrag programs on the market. They cost, but people claim they are worth it. I don't feel the same.

You can try PowerDefrag from www.e-technik.com which reproduces the conditions as with ScanDisk starting up after a bad shutdown or VoptXP from www.goldenbow.com (A very sophisticated system.) However the problem with both Defrag and ScanDisk has now been identified as those programs which still employ long filenames, and which cause defrag and scandisk to have to re-read the file allocation tables. Once all long filename programs are removed from the disk you can run the Microsoft Maintenace Wizard in normal mode whilst still on-line. The other reason for defrag and scandisk to fail is, if there are invalid entries in the registry and good registry and file maintenance is essential to keeping a computer running smoothly. To do this one can try either RegCleaner (freeware) or System Mechanic (currently on 30-day free evaluation from www.iolo.com.) I now find that the standard Microsoft Maintenance Manager is more than adequate and would advise users of 9x systems (95/'98/'98se) to use the DEFRAG.exe from Me in place of their old defrag.exe as it is much faster. Just re-name the old defrag.exe to defrag.old and put DEFRAG.exe from Me in the same folder. When you are sure it is working delete your old defrag.exe and keep a copy of the one from Me on a diskette for future use. ("You can amaze your friends", too.) ETech.

Hi, If Windows Scan /Frag do an OK job. Stick with it, Does me Ok. Col. I run every 3 days. I need to. Test 5 different progs a day, reinstall /uninstall etc.At least i get paid for it !.. Regards Col.