Disk Defragmentor says it is finished but nothing changed

The owners hard disk was very full.

Bob

including removing all but the latest system restore point. If you're a risk taker you can temporarily turn it off altogether. Next, disable hibernation mode if you have that turned on and turn off the swap file. Reboot and run defrag this way and hope for the best. Make sure you're fully backed up or have a full image of your HD available for disaster recovery. Be also aware that a Windows XP defrag doesn't leave the nice compact image that Win 98 did or the old Norton defrag used in older MS products.

plenty of room on the drive in which to shift file fragments around.

You might consider going here and downloading CONTIG -
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Contig.mspx

It is designed as a file defragmenter but will work on a drive or partition using wildcards and switches.

contig -s c:\*.* will defrag all files on the C drive and in all directories and subdirectories on the C drive and it does so fairly quickly.

After downloading open a command prompt and type CONTIG to see the available switches. It must naturally be located in a directory included in the Path so I recommend either the root directory or the Windows directory.

After it has defragged files you should be able to run the GUI defragger because it will need less free space for less fragmented files.

Not sure if this will bypass the problem you are experiencing. But you might give ScanDefrag 5.5 a try. I used to run the Windows defrag tool as it is really all that is necessary for the average home/office user. But ScanDefrag 5.5Seems to do a more thorough defrag, especially with "Windows Defragmenter" selected from the drop-down menu, according to the Windows tool analyzer anyway. And it too is free.

I've found that I need to de-select "ChkDsk" as I causes an 0x7E Stop Error. I used to understand that this Stop Error occurs because I have Zone Alarm installed, and that it is harmless. I have since read on a MS site that it is actually due to a bug in XP. The site provided a patch that didn't work. But as far as I know it's harmless, except that I have to do a hard-boot to recover.

Hope I wasn't long-winded. Just want be thorough.

Hope this is helpful.

Charlie

Usually 15% free space is enough to defragment, and since you have 18%, that should not be an issue. The windows defragmenter routinely does not defrag some of the system files, paging file, restore points etc.

If you feel it is a problem with the drive itself, its a good idea to run CHKDSK before you do anything else. Ensure that there are no errors before defragging. If I am not wrong, XP will refuse to defrag a 'dirty' volume. And if you do have a disk error, look into replacing it at the soonest.

I would suggest that you download a third party defragger and see if that can defrag fully. I personally never liked the XP defrag tool because of its shortcomings, although in its defence, it is free.

I use Diskeeper for defragging, so I wouldnt hesitate in recommending it because it does an excellent job. There are free trial versions at the Diskeeper website ( www.diskeeper.com ), so get the Pro version, install and run a defrag followed by a boot-time defrag. That ought to do the trick. Diskeeper Pro also has a nifty automatic defragment mode, which you can enable after the above, if you want to check that out.