Immediately following installation of Symantec Fire Wall 2003 my Defrag stop working with message "Defrag can't be started." Deinstallation of Fire Wall didn't help. I checked the Defrag at every step of the clean install system and this Fire Wall is the definite culprit in this particular PC.

Tony, Sounds like you should go to the Symantec home site and contact them. They could possibly give you an explanation and a fix. You might be able to see how to contact them by clicking on the Help section of the firewall.

Hi, If you have done a complete uninstall of the program that you believe caused the problem, then surely, there is a chance that that program might not be the culprit? How are you so sure it is definitely the problem, Good Luck, Shaun

It isn't the problem at all, the problem is either Norton Speed Disk, or Diskeeper/Diskeeper Lite. It's a common occurance.

Tony, I think it would be helpful if you gave us more information about your setup! Do you run either of the programs that Hooner mentioned? Shaun

I do not run any other Defrag then the one included w/ Win XP. As to the complete uninstallation of Symantec Fire Wall - well I'm sure there are some permanent entries in the registry. I run complete HDD reformating and clean install -twice and this problem occur in the same circumstances - when I installed Fire Wall. As to the Symantec Help - well there isn't anything on their Site in this regard, and I'm not ready to pay them for any tech. advice either. Thanks guys for your input. I'm using XP provided Fire Wall for now.

Hi Tony. Firstly, make sure that every program on your computer is closed down before you attempt a defrag including virus guard / any programs in the system tray. Seccondly, you should clean the registry of dead links. If you look on google for 'free registry cleaners' and run it on your system. Thirdly, If this still does not fix the problem then manually check the registry for entries, Start>Run>regedit Go to Edit and then Find Next and type something like symantec in the box. Do not delete entries from the registry unless you are confident in doing so. If you are not sure - paste a copy of the entry here and we can let you know. Good Luck, Shaun Croucher