posted
It's all those bad things I said about Windows, isn't it? I shoulda asked it to leave the room before bad-mouthing it.
I'm trying to defragment my HD. Problem: every time I try, it never gets anywhere before something gets writ to the hard disk, and it has to start over. ScanDisk confirms this problem. Now when I run Windows in Safe Mode, things work fine, EXCEPT that my defragger runs incredibly slowly, and freezes around 55%. Which is especially annoying, since it took it ten hours to get that far. So why is my computer writing to the HD constantly? There's nothing running except Explorer (which I can't very well close) and the ScanDisk/Disk Defragmenter programs themselves. What the heck's goin' on?!
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
posted
My dad's computer has the same problem. I could start a defrag come back 5 hours later and it hasn't even started.
Meanwhile on my computer I make it a point to defrag once a week. It takes less than 10 minutes to defrag my 40GB harddrive, but all day to defrag his 6GB. As for what causes this problem...I haven't got a clue.
-------------------- I'm slightly annoyed at Hobbes' rather rude decision to be much more attractive than me though. That's just rude. - PsyLiam, Oct 27, 2005.
Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Remember one thing before you reach for the hammer: it's nothing personal. Computers are indiscrimate about whom they want to annoy.
Now, as for your problem: have you let Scandisk run a deep surface scan, or did you just do a superficial check-up? More often then not, a more thorough investigation can reveal what's causing the problem.
I can think of two possible solutions: 1). Your HD is nearing to the end of its lifespan (unlikely, but bad disk-maintance can accelerate the aging process) and needs to be replaced. 2). It's a virus/worm of some sort.
By the way, the fuller a disk is, the longer it takes to defrag completely. Especially if the amount of free space is less than the size of Windows' swapfile. Deleting/archiving a few programs might help as well.
posted
I CAN'T have ScanDisk do a deep surface scan. It doesn't get much past analyzing your FATs before something writes to the drive, and it starts over again. Thus my problem.
As for HD space, my computer DOES frequently tell me when I'm online that I'm running out of space. Of course, I tend to disregard that, seeing as I have over seven hundred megs free...
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
posted
I had that problem, I had to disable the WildFile GoBack feature, then everything went smoothly....
Then there is this answer.....
Maybe it is a Dem. PC???
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Sounds like you might have a screwed up TOC on that last problem... open up a DOS box and type "fdisk /mbr" (without the quotation marks, of course). That should in theory get rid of the wrongly reported diskspace.
(I try to make a habit of not letting my system get so FUBAR'red, at this stage I'd probably be low-level formatting )
posted
Mind if I ask what that's gonna do to my computer, first?
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Fix it, hopefully
-------------------- ".mirrorS arE morE fuN thaN televisioN" - TEH PNIK FLAMIGNO
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
Yeah, it's a good idea never to listen when someone tells you to type a command starting w/ "fdisk", unless you know what it does... *L*
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Okay, rather than leaping to the "virus" panic option, let's be calm.
Now, you said that only Explorer is running. I give you enough credit to know what you're talking about here, but just in case, have you
1/ closed all programs running in your task bar?
2/ CTRL+ALT+DEL, and closed all the programs running, except explorer?
3/ Deleted everything in your Startup folder (which should, frankly, be empty anyway. I have yet to meat a program that deserves to be in there. Especially the office programs, which work fine regardless).
If you've done all that, then, er, I'm not sure. You could try running Scandisk from DOS, which does a much more thorough job. Go to your windows folder, and type Scandisk.exe.
And you don't need to defrag your hard drive every week. You barely need to do it every other month. Defragging your hard drive has two uses:
1/ It kills some time
2/ It makes you think you're actually doing some work, when you're not.
It is possibly the ultimate way of procrasting on a computer, short of trying to find the perfect wallpaper for Windows.
For your other point, how do you know it has 700 meg free? Are you right clicking on it, then checking properties? Have you set the Swap file allocation size to manual? Try checking using DOS.
Also, call me crazy, but I'm not sure low level formatting's a good idea. Since (I think) it destroys IDE hard drives.
In fact, reformatting your hard drive is a horrible idea, that should only be done in the most desperete of emergiencies. Far better to stop your hard drive getting in a bad state in the first place, but if you have to reformat, you can kiss your weekend goodbye, as you try and find EVERY CD that had stuff on it you want, and you try and find every patch you're downloaded from the internet, and every piece of shareware, and blah.
Finally, since your computer keeps running out of hard disk space, I'd check to see what you have running all the time. If you're one of those people who thinks the more you have in your taskbar, the bigger your penis, have a look to see if you REALLY need taskscheduler, that CD-R program that doesn't really do anything, and half a dozen sound and graphic programs.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
posted
Nah, I don't keep that much stuff running. My penis is big enough as it is.
Though I did figure out where all my HD space went. A 700MB file just HAPPENED to show up on my drive for no apparent reason, in the WinHack folder. Don't ask me where it came from. I killed it, and the prog, seeing as I never used it.
how do you know it has 700 meg free?
Click the drive, and the info bar at the bottom says it. Check the properties and it says it. Everything says I have 700 MB free. Now, at least. I didn't when that 700MB file showed up and knocked me down to 2.
As for everything running, yep, I did all that.
I'll try running ScanDisk from DOS.
And I probably should defrag, seeing as I haven't done it since I bought the computer over a year ago.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
posted
What I like to do is partition the drive in two parts, so I can format the buggy Windoze partition, and keep my important files on my second partition. This doesn't solve your problem, but if you get rid of the problem, it'd be good if you did the same thing. Also, I like to burn my stuff to CDs, so I never allow myself to have less than 60% free space. Right now I have 6gigs free on a 10gig HDD, of the 4gigs, 2 are mp3s
-------------------- Me- Hi Jen! What's up! Jen- You again??!?! Listen kid, I'm not interested in you. Stop bothering me, I'm a lot older than you and I have a boyfriend. How did you find my ICQ number anyways? Me- Oh, so just cuz you're a movie star now, and you're new album made millions, you think you're too good for me? Jen- Yes!!! Get it thorough your head! I am a person, I am not Jennifer Lopez the hottest woman on earth that everyone wants to sleep with, I'm a person, leave me alone!!! Me- Fine! Be that way! Me- Jen.... Where'd you go.... I love you... please come back.... please....
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