Defrag and scan disk

[Kingpin]

I can't seem to scan disk or defrag anymore. I have Windows ME any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[Weird NJ]

Try formatting. :-D

[ClusterF@#$]

when you say you can't do it? what do you mean? they don't start at all? or they don't finish. Any errors?

If you can start it but can't finish... try closing down all other active applications... and when i say ALL i mean not just things you have open in the task bar. You have to kill everything in task manager by pressing ctrl-alt-del and manually ending each task.

long story short, if something is running in the background that writes to the drive you are defragging, it restarts the defrag process from square 1. Any disk i-o will interrupt the process.

I don't know if that's your problem though.. may be something else. Just a tip.



Edited By ClusterF@#$ on 1036624985

[Goatweed]

If you can start it but can't finish... try closing down all other active applications... and when i say ALL i mean not just things you have open in the task bar. You have to kill everything in task manager by pressing ctrl-alt-del and manually ending each task.

not EVERYTHING - you need to leave EXPLOERE and SYSTRAY running (at least that's how it was in 98SE, I assume it hold true for the crapheap that ME is - no offense Kingpin).

If they don't run at all, I would suggest you back up all of your critical files, format that drive and install either Win2K or Win XP Pro. If you wanna stick with ME you can, but this might happen again at some point down the road. ME is just awful.

[ClusterF@#$]

Bahhhhh that's what I meant

[Goatweed]

I didn't mean to step on your toes cluster, but if he killed those two apps then he'd never get SD or DF working.

I knew what ya meant though :thumbs-up:

[Kingpin]

They start but never finish in the box that pops up when I do ctrl+alt+del i have:

explorer
sk9910dm
lpadqm
dap
devldrlb
bwcfgloader
iamapp
xupitersrartup
mrtmngr
qagent
launcher
poproxy
navapw32
systray
bcmdmmsg


plus the IE and any other open screens I have.

[Goatweed]

explorer - leave it running
sk9910dm - kill it
lpadqm - kill it
dap - kill it
devldrlb - kill it
bwcfgloader - kill it
iamapp - kill it
xupitersrartup - kill it
mrtmngr - kill it
qagent - kill it
launcher - kill it
poproxy - I'm not sure but leave it - but if you still cant run them while this is running, kill it
navapw32 - definitely kill this - this is your antivirus, and I suspect is what's casuing you trouble (it usually does)
systray - leave it running
bcmdmmsg - kill this - I think this is windows messenger

plus the IE and any other open screens I have

you shouldn't have anything open when doing a scandisk and/or a defrag. kill everything, run the scan disk and then defrag - dont try to do anything else until these are done, or you'll interrupt them.

[ClusterF@#$]

yeah get rid of all that shit except for explorer and systray like goatweed said. Kill poproxy too fo'sho'! That should do the trick. Good luck.



Edited By ClusterF@#$ on 1036633792

[FollowThisLogic]

Oy, yes, end task on all that shit, except Explorer and Systray.

Another option would be to start up in Safe Mode and run defrag and scandisk there.

Or, format and put on 2K or XP. :-D

[Kingpin]

Thanks FTL. I appreciate it. If it comes up again, how do i remove that shit.

[FollowThisLogic]

Most of this shit runs from the Registry..... might not be such a hot idea to go screwing with that.... unless you make a backup of it first. Others probably run from the Startup folder (Start|Programs|Startup), just delete the shortcut from that folder and it's gone, well, won't run on startup anymore anyway.

Oh, goaty, poproxy is the Norton AntiVirus email scanner. Killing everything but Explorer and systray (and let's be honest, even systray can go but doesn't have to) will never cause Windows to quit functioning. Win9x doesn't even let you kill the actual core stuff that runs it, Explorer is just the GUI.

And for my next trick, anyone wanna know how to edit explorer.exe to change the text on the Start button? I've done it! :bouncer:

[Goatweed]

I'd like to know that trick - START seems so...plain :lol:

[FollowThisLogic]

Oh, it's easy.... just open explorer.exe with a hex editor (I used to use Norton DiskEdit), do a search and you'll find S t a r t (the letters are separated by a null character for some reason), and just edit the letters. Of course, you can't go over 5 characters - or if you can, I wouldn't want to try as I don't know that much about hex editing. But it was always a neat trick to show people my "Stop" button. :-D

[PeterDragon]

in addition to the startup folder, you can go to start->run-> msconfig.
msconfig wll have a tab called "startup". you can uncheck all of the stuff you don't want to run, and re-check it later if you need it.

[FollowThisLogic]

Haha, oh yeah, msconfig. I always forget about that - 2K doesn't have it. :-D

Yes, the startup tab in msconfig will allow you to shut off the things that start in the registry..... good call there.

[PeterDragon]

Haha, oh yeah, msconfig. I always forget about that - 2K doesn't have it

I thought XP Pro didn't either - there was no shortcut.
then I found out you had to actually TYPE it in. Amazing.

[Kingpin]

Thanks guys I removed a lot of the shit. I appreciate all the help.

[Ronin]

One other thing no one mentioned. Disable Screen savers and the Monitor Power Management thing. my scandisk complained that it was interupting it's scan.

[Weird NJ]

Another option would be to start up in Safe Mode and run defrag and scandisk there

Ha.. This was always hard for me to do. This and Bios settings. I would restart and then get distracted and forget to press a button. So I'd have to restart again, like 4 times in a row.