I have tried defragmenting in safe mode and it says run scandisk even after i run scandisk first. So, I run scandisk in safe mode and after it's finished i run defragment. However, it gets to 4% and a message pops up still that says i need to run scandisk. I run scandisk and then defrag again and the same message pops up at 4%. Can anyone help me? Have I erred somewhere? thank you. G (-:

Howdy, If you know who makes your HDD "hard disk drive" Go to there web site and download the diag. utility to make sure the HDD is ok. Scandisk can only detect so much. I will check some technet articles for you to see what I can find as well in the meantime. Laters, Kevin The Tech Dude

First run scandisk, then defrag, then scandisk, then defrag, then scandisk, and so on.

scan disk defrag in safe mode? never did this or had reason too. defrag tends to comtinue to restart until i close the many running programs leaving only explorer and systray. asking you to run scan disk usually means you have errors on your drive. when you run scan disk does it give you an ok telling you no errors? or telling you it found several errors and fixed them all? you may need to try a thourough scan disk. this usually takes a long, long time but it digs a little deeper. drive errors occur for me when family uses the power button or the ups off button to shut down windows. makes me cringe just thinking about it.

Defrag sucks, if for no other rason than it takes so long. However, most compaints I've seen have been about defrag restarting over and over, because the swap file is "dynamic." If you set your swap file to a FIXED size, (equal to somewhere between one and two times the size of your memory) you should never have a problem. I have 256 ram and a 256 swap file, and I've never had a problem. But I use Norton's speed disk. Ideally, the (fixed) swap file should be at the beginning of the hard drive. You can download Norton's (or MacAfee's) utilities for a free demo, and after using their defragmenter once, you're all set. Then you can go back to usiong defrag if you like.