Hello, I'm having a very strange problem, whenever I try to defrag my Win XP Pro machine it freezes just a few minutes into the process, This happens with Windows defrag and Norton Speeddisk. I decided to run scan disk with the scan surface area option checked, every time I do this my computer freezes when it gets to 51% of scaning the surface area. The strange thing is I've never had any problems while working in windows, I've also run Win2K on the same machine for the last 8 months with no defrag or scandisk problems. These have only come about since I've installed XP, a clean install, not an upgrade. Here are my specs: AMD Duron 800, PC Chips M810LR motherboard with SIS 730 Chipset, 288MB RAM, Adaptec AHA-2940U2W Ultra II SCSI card, Quantum Atlas V9 9GB Hard Drive and an ATI Rage Fury Pro 32MB Video card. Any advice on how to fix this problem would be greatly appriciated. If need be I can survive without defragmenting or just go back to Win2K but I would much rather solve the problem. Jeremy

Sounds like your hard drive is about to crash. Scandisk stops at 51% because it is encountering bad tracks. I might think about replacing the drive before it is too late.

Try to Scandisk in Safe Mode. Safe Mode loads a minimal set of drivers when starting, so don't get scared when your desktop wallpaper looks freaky. You can start in Safe Mode by holding the f8 key during startup and you will come to the help menu. One of the options there is Safe Mode. Select It then press enter. If it will Scandisk, then when it is finished, perform a normal startup and attempt to defragment.

I tested the disk with the manufacturers disk testing utility and found no errors. Whatever the problem is, it is within the operating system.