I'm having a problem with Disc Defragmentation. It functions normally until 11% completion, then freezes up completely. The only thing happening is a tapping noise in sequences of four. Most odd. Help please.

Run a disc cleanup, scandisk and then try the defrag from safemode. The internet is a series of tubes!

You may want to run diagnostics from the hard drive maker's site on that machine pronto!

snewcombe, as suggested, the tapping noise may well be 'headseeking' (rapping while seeking a sector) which can indicate a physical problem. Or not. Think I'd try the recommendations and if that won't do the trick, maybe do it in safe mode to give it all the help you can? Crossed fingers can't hurt. FYI, I use XP and it can go months without needing a defrag whereas my ME used to require it often (did it weekly). HTH. Ed in Texas.

I dont use the defragger that comes with Windows Me as one of their default tools .I have Norton Utilities ,which has speed disk or the optimazation wizard that cleans your registry and puts your swap file at the start out front of other files ,for quicker access. I have found this to work very well ,right after I use the Norton Utilities Speed Disk there is a positive change in the speed of my system ! It also comes with Norton Disk Dr. which will find bad sectors and repair them for you ,if you set it to automatically fix all errors ! Good Luck Nick

Press alt-ctrl-delete and click end task for any AV program and any others you do not need. Defrag won't finish because something else is running. Find it, stop it, and defrag will finish. Running defrag is safe mode only works because minimal stuff is loaded at Startup. Also, check MSConfig/Startup and see if you really want all the stuff that is checked to run at Startup. If you are ONLY going to do wordprocessing, do you need your ISPs software loaded? If you're ONLY going to go on the Web, do you need your wp software loaded? It's your choice: faster startup, less stuff loaded, slower load times for apps OR slower startup, more crap in memory that you may not use, but faster app load times.

Nick Ritchie NEVER let any utility fix disk errors automatically. You need to keep a handle on the number of errors being reported. That way you get an early warning if your HD is about to die. Norton Utilities gets varied reports. You have to know which facilities help and which cause more problems than they are worth (varies with versions). Mostly speed disk is fine. System Doctor can be dubious and CrashGuard, if present, can actually cause crashes. DerekW