Running XP Pro SP-2 Scandisk runs as soon as the unit starts up; so nothing is running at that time; and it still takes 1.5hrs. After I run scandisk; I boot into SAFE Mode and run Defragmenter. It takes HOURS and HOURS. I have an 80gig drive with 77% free space. This has never happened before. Am I loosing this drive? Or is there a fixable problem?

just asking: -you've made sure you only have needed processes running? -why does checkdisk run on startup? -is that ur only hard drive, does it happen with other drives connected to that copmuter?

also, does the hard disk sound like its being accessed, does the yellow light flicker on ur box?

FJ, my thought is to simply remove it from the start menu. It doesn't need to run with each boot-up. Monthly should be often enough and suspect it takes so long because of your HDD size. That's a lot for it to digest. Perhaps you would be better off to run it at night without an operator present and just let it do it's thing. HTH. Ed in Texas.

Exit from any anti viral program you have running. Do not disable it as it will require you to reinstall it. Go to msconfig and uncheck anything that starts with the xp os. Except the tray. Run any and all of your spy/adware tools. Run your reg cleaning tool. Run the xp internal cleanup program. Make sure any screen savers are disabled. Go to task manager and kill all timed events. Get diskeeper 9 and use it. The onboard defragger was written by the same outfit but dk9 is light years ahead of the xp version. Run throught your system and throw out the trash just like little Susy homemaker in her house. Do it often. Note> If you don't defrag often it will take some time to run thru your drive. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid...

a couple of thoughts... do you have windows xp chkdsk scheduled? do you have it configured to check for bad sectors? (this is probably whats taking so long).

it shouldnt take that long, i have a 120Gb HD n mine takes max 5 mins to defrag. goto C:\windows\Prefetch folder and delet all contents in here