A few months ago, I offered some tips on helping Windows' disk scanner and defragger complete their jobs without freezing or starting over (see "Overcome Halted Defrags", in our February 2000 issue). Several readers responded with these additional tips:

Go away and let it run: these programs can't finish their jobs if you keep using your computer. So take a break after you start a scan or defrag. Also, if you have a screen saver or any program that's set to kick in while your system is idle, disable it temporarily.

Defrag in Safe Mode: if you boot into Windows' Safe Mode, you are much less likely to run into some program that causes a conflict with the disk scanner or defragger. To get into Safe Mode, reboot your computer. If you are using Windows 95, wait until the words "Starting Windows 95" appear, then press <F8>. With Windows 98, as soon as the boot process starts, press and hold down <Ctrl>. In either case, you'll eventually get to the Startup menu, where Safe Mode will be one of the options.