Endless defragmenting

Endless defragmenting

Q I thought you might be able to help me with a problem I'm having with Disk Defragmenter under Windows 95b. It keeps restarting after about 10 seconds or so with the message "drive contents changed ù restarting".

The only other programs that I thought might have any influence on the problem are PartitionMagic and IBM's Landisk virus scanner, both of which are loaded. However, Landisk is only set up for custom scans when I activate them.

The problem also occurs on my second computer, which has the same programs loaded. I've tried all different sorts of configurations to no avail and I've run out of ideas except for deleting each one of these programs in turn. I thought I'd ask you first in case it was a common problem that you knew about and didn't have anything to do with the two programs I've mentioned.
û Glen Gray

A This problem affects both Disk Defragmenter and Scandisk. If any changes are made to the hard drive while these utilities are being run they need to restart. This can be a real problem as you could have any number of programs running surreptitiously in the background that could write to the hard drive. Scandisk at least has a command line version that can be run exclusively in MS-DOS mode. With Disk Defragmenter you have to track down all the offending programs and close them.

Some running programs appear as buttons on the taskbar. These are easy enough to find and close. Others will appear as an icon in the notification area (the part of the taskbar where the clock is). You can usually right-click on the icon and choose Exit to close these programs.

Other programs will give no hint of their presence. For example, one of the programs that commonly causes problems with Disk Defragmenter is Microsoft's Find Fast. This is part of Microsoft Office and so is present on the vast majority of computers. To turn it off go to the Control Panel menu and double-click the Find Fast icon. This will bring up the Find Fast window. From the Index menu choose Pause Indexing then close the Find Fast window.

It is fairly difficult to second-guess which programs might write to the hard drive. However, programs that might keep a log file, such as virus checkers, are likely candidates. Holding down <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del> will bring up a list of running programs. You can close these programs by selecting a program name and clicking the End Task button. Before running Defragmenter close all programs except the three that are essential for running Windows 95. These are Explorer, Osa and Systray. Some programs may take a little while to close and you may be prompted by a dialogue box saying that the program is not responding. Simply click on the End Task button to close that program immediately.

û Roy Chambers

Category:win95
Issue: August 1998