defraging and scaning

[Susan Neddo]

I am having a problem defraging my hard drive"C". It says "have restarted 10 times" and that "something else has been writing to this drive"? Anyway I cannot defrag or scan disk..Is there somthing I can do to fix this problem, without hireing someone to come in and fix it? thanks for your time
Susan Neddo

[Artyom Voronchihin]

Hello.
Possible reason is running antivirus software. It is checking disk activity and write it's own data to disk during defrag moves data. So defrag check that data on disk changed and restart defragmentation process. After 10 restarts defrag stops with error. So if you are using an antivirus, stop it before defrag.

[Mark Prado]

You know what it sounds as if you are having the smae problem as me. THe tech told me the only one to resolve this ther then the scan disc is to use your Quick Restore CD am guessing that reformats everything because am not to familiar with Campaq but am working on as i type and i need to see if there is anyone that can pass there quick restore cd this was because i dont have one cause the owner of the computer didnt recive any software with the computer because it was giving to her. So am not to sure how i can get one f those cd's. But yea i belive that the only way to resolve your error.

Mark
webman8605@msn.com

[Roger Faucher]

Hi everyone:

Please try to restart your PC in safe mode and then run Scandisk. If for some reason, you can't get that to work, come up normally and open Task Manager (CTRL/ALT/DELETE). Then stop all applications, close Task Manager and close any applications associated with icons in the System Tray. Then try Defrag. You should not have to do a recovery/restore operation to solve this problem!

Roger

[Deron Funk]

I ran into this same problem while working on a friends PC. I checked for things running in the background like virus scanning software and other non-essential items. I seem to remember I found 3 or 4 things running in the background; unfortunatley I don't recall the exact applications. Once I stopped them from running, scandisk and defrag ran much better. Use the Task Manager to see what processes are running in the background. WARNING: If you are unfamiliar with Task Manager and identifying processes, then you would be better off using msconfig to stop all background processes from starting on reboot, then reboot the pc and try your defrag again.

[Jonathan Plunkett]

Also important to ensure things like Screensavers are disabled. I have had similar problems and the biggest culprits are the Antivirus and Screen savers. Also may be an idea to stop any power management that may interrupt the PC eg. Hard drive power offs etc.

Hope this helps.

[Robert_134]

Yep... Mr. Roger Faucher's answer is correct. Go into Safe Mode, (F8 on start up), and run both scandisk and defrag, in that order. If it doesn't work from there, go to:

http://www.belarc.com/harddrives.html

and test your hard drive. You never know.
_____________________________________________

And for those that are interested in checking out this really useful utility, (and don't already know about it), go to this link:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

You'll know alot about your PC after you use it.

-Rob

[RHU]

TURN OFF YOUR SCREEN SAVER OR SET THE TIME TO START TO 3 PLUS HOURS... AND DISABLE ANTIVIRUS.

[RHU]

ALSO IF YOU HAVE AUTO UPDATE FINDER FOR WINDOWS DISABLE THAT..

[Jon Finley]

That may work fine as well, but the easiest way is still to go in under safe mode and scan then defrag.

Jon

[David Holbrook]

I would recommend using safe mode without any network function. This only activates an absolute minimum af system applications while you attempt to do the defrag. Before you run the defrag, however, you should go in and clean out all the "cookies" you have aquired from browsing the Web to free up drive space on your hard drive. Defrag does need to have enough free space on the drive to be able to run effectively. If you are using MS Internet explorer, then as a minimum you can go (from within the browser)to "tools", "internet options" and delete temporary internet files there. This will only delete a part of the internet files you pick up while browsing.

The problem you are having is because there are applications like antivirus software, AOL, nasty little applications you may have aquired from web sites you have visited, etc., all of which are running in the background and messing up the scan disk and defrag operations. I would also recommend you visit the Lavasoft site at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ and down load their free Ad-Aware program. It will clean out all the nasty little monitor and click programs that so many of the web sites try to install on your system to track your usage and are probably what is giving you grief now.