Computer help needed!!

[Cipher]

I can't get my computer to defrag. I don't know what to do. I don't even know if i'm posting this in the right area
The other night i went to my system tools and clicked on defrag and i fell asleep. I woke up about 6 hours later and it was still only on 3%. I don't know why it takes forever. I do a scan disk and a cleaning of my temp internet files once a week. I have no problem with that. But defragging, my goodness..Grrrr. Could one of you computer savvy people possibly help me? Or maybe give me a suggestion as to what's causing this?

Thanks.

 

[Amfig]

Try this:

If you have broadband with a full time connection, turn the modem off, or unplug it. Turn off the screen saver and any wallpaper changer. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Hit end task to end everything except Explorer, Systray and Point32 (if you have Point 32 installed). Those things will sometime write to or access disk, causing defrag to restart endlessly and never complete.

 

[Cipher]

Re: Try this:

If you have broadband with a full time connection, turn the modem off, or unplug it. Turn off the screen saver and any wallpaper changer. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Hit end task to end everything except Explorer, Systray and Point32 (if you have Point 32 installed). Those things will sometime write to or access disk, causing defrag to restart endlessly and never complete.

I have DSL..But i don't keep it on 24-7. Should i power cycle it and turn it off for a few minutes? I have no idea what a point 32 is..i'm pretty stupid when it comes to computers

I'll figure it out eventually, Thanks Amfig

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Re: Try this:

I have DSL..But i don't keep it on 24-7. Should i power cycle it and turn it off for a few minutes? I have no idea what a point 32 is..i'm pretty stupid when it comes to computers

I'll figure it out eventually, Thanks Amfig

A simpler method to do away with programs (other than defrag itself) that write to the disk periodically:

Reboot your computer and hold down the control key whil it reboots until a menu appears.

Choose safe mode form the menu and let your computer continue booting.

Run defrag from Safe mode.

If you have a very large disk -- 20 GB or larger -- defrag will usually restart three or four times while it's working because it writes to it's log file or something. On a badly fragmented disk, it can take five to ten minutes for every Meg of disk space.

If your disk is nearly full, defrag will take longer than it would if your disk is less than 50% full.

Delete your Temporary internet fils, Temporary Files, and any FILExxxx.CHK files scandisk may have left behind before running defrag. Those are all files which are a waste of time to defrag and take up valuable disk space defrag needs to work efficiently.

Defrag more often -- if you keep your disk relatively unfragmented, it doesn't take as long to defrag.

 

[homerjay]

Who's your avatar Cipher? She's hot.

 

[max_dylen]

i have your solution

all you need to make this work is a cd burner
ok do this , back up ur whole drive on cd , the drive you want to defrag, then format your drive and then take your cds and copy them over to you drive, and presto you drive is defragged.........wait your thinking what is this guy on crack , he just told me to back up my drive, but if u look at the technical side of what defraggin your drive does , and im not going to do that today , you will relize that defraging is really just two thing

- back up -
and
- restore -

 

[Sexy Princess Jessie]

Quite true. Since copying a file to another medium inherently "defrags" it, copying the file away, erasing the origional, then copying it back would accomplish the desired result. However, it seems to me that this would only work if your hard drive is less than 70 Mb, or whatever a good CD-R can hold. Disk space is 99% of the time MUCH larger than any CD-R you'd find.

 

[Cipher]

Who's your avatar Cipher? She's hot.

I don't know who she is..Sorry

 

[Cipher]

Thanks!!!

Thanks for the help and advice everyone!!!
I appreciate it!!!
I finally defragged, and all is well and will be well for awhile..LoL

 

[max_dylen]

Quite true. Since copying a file to another medium inherently "defrags" it, copying the file away, erasing the origional, then copying it back would accomplish the desired result. However, it seems to me that this would only work if your hard drive is less than 70 Mb, or whatever a good CD-R can hold. Disk space is 99% of the time MUCH larger than any CD-R you'd find.

dont u mean 700 megs??
and u cann use more than onc cd if that comes to it

 

[Weird Harold]

Quite true. Since copying a file to another medium inherently "defrags" it, copying the file away, erasing the origional, then copying it back would accomplish the desired result. However, it seems to me that this would only work if your hard drive is less than 70 Mb, or whatever a good CD-R can hold. Disk space is 99% of the time MUCH larger than any CD-R you'd find.

Copying a file and then copying it back doe NOT do the same as defragging, because it will write the file right back into the fragmented locations it came from unless the disk is defragmented between operations to close the gaps created by deleting a file. That's essentially what cause disk fragmentation in the first place -- the OS saves a copy of the original file being updated, updates the copy, deletes the original and renames the copy.

Backing up to a CD, formatting, and restoring WILL do the same as defragging, but it will also trigger the copy protection on any program that records a program's location on disk when it installs to prevent copies from running. It does NOT respect "unmoveable files."

The biggest drawback to the backup/format/restore/ option is the time factor require to write and then read back multiple CD-Rs -- On my system, with 36 GB of disk space, it would take 35-40 CDs to do the backup at a write speed of about ten minutes/complete CD -- about 6 hours for the back-up (assuming I made each disk change requested immediately.) That's way more work than just letting Defrag run overnight if necessary.

 

[Sexy Princess Jessie]

I don't do much with CD-Rs other than back-up my music CDs. (And DON'T get me started on people stealing music...grrr...)

I understand that you have to wipe the hard-drive between the Back-up and restore events. I never did give any though to immovable files though, I suppose that WOULD cause problems.

If it took more than one CD I wouldn't even want to think about all this. Booting into Safe Mode (Good idea Weird Harold) would be the way to go for any drive larger than a gig.

 

[RomanticMaleNY]

Going into SAFE MODE very good Idea... You can also search Google for a program called VOPT.. very fat defragger and doesn't get screwed with other programs running in the backround.. I use it and it's great.. defrag a 60 gig drive in under an hour.

 

[mwk1323]

This is what I do

I have two hard drives. One is 20 gigs and the other is 75 gigs. Most actually have more files and data that they don't have to move often, which is what causes disk fragmentation. I put my OS and all of my temp folders and such on the smaller of the two drives. For instance, while downloading a file it is saved into a temp folder on my 20gig drive and when it is complete, I decide which folder I'm going to put it in on my 75gig'er and put it there. Most of my files on the big drive are stuff I don't move around much, if at all. I can, if necessary, format my OS harddrive and re-install without losing any of my music, movies or any of the other files I have stored on the big disk... I said big disk... Most people are not willing to afford running a system with two hard drives, but if you use partitions, if is basically the same.

 

[Cipher]

Going into SAFE MODE very good Idea... You can also search Google for a program called VOPT.. very fat defragger and doesn't get screwed with other programs running in the backround.. I use it and it's great.. defrag a 60 gig drive in under an hour.

That's exactly what i did, i did the safe mode route. I had no problems. I will however, look into the program

Thanks RMNY!

And thanks WH And TY you to everyone once again!

 

[Forever_Gemini]

I'm hoping this is the right thread to post my question (however stupid it may be lol). I'd like to get better speakers for my pc, but I'm not sure if it's worth to spend the money on them vs. just using my CD-player... Yes, I'm talking about listening to CD's while on the puter

Anyone with ideas or suggestions?

 

[Cipher]

I'm hoping this is the right thread to post my question (however stupid it may be lol). I'd like to get better speakers for my pc, but I'm not sure if it's worth to spend the money on them vs. just using my CD-player... Yes, I'm talking about listening to CD's while on the puter

Anyone with ideas or suggestions?

You've come to the right place..Weird Harold knows hella about puters and stuff like that. My pc isn't new..it's 3yrs old. But when i got my set up, it came with speakers JBL Pros. They sound pretty damn good to me, and sometimes my cd's sound better on my pc..LoL But ask him..track him down or wait for him to see this, he'll help you.

 

[Weird Harold]

I'm hoping this is the right thread to post my question (however stupid it may be lol). I'd like to get better speakers for my pc, but I'm not sure if it's worth to spend the money on them vs. just using my CD-player... Yes, I'm talking about listening to CD's while on the puter

That depends on the speakers you are considering -- most sound cards require amplified speakers to get any real quality sound from your computer.

The best solution is to use the "line out" jack on your sound card and feed the sound to a dedicated audio system -- if you can find a system that has aux inputs anymore, that is.

Most "computer speakers" are not up to an audiophiles standards of sound reproduction -- the headsets on your portable CD player are.

Personally, I would prefer to reduce the workload on my computer and use the CD player. I do have a stereo with aux inputs I use for my computer sound, so it's as good as I get from the headsets, however, a good CD sound system doesn't require my computer to be on to listen to music.

 

[Minout]

I have stories on records and audio cassettes from my childhood and am trying to copy them to cd for my daughter. Any suggestions?

 

[Weird Harold]

I have stories on records and audio cassettes from my childhood and am trying to copy them to cd for my daughter. Any suggestions?

The best results would come from a direct connection from the "Line Out" of a stereo system to the "Line In" or "Aux In" input to your sound card to record them in MP3 or WAV format.

If you don't have a stereo with Line Out connections, get a patch cable to good from the headset jack of a walkman or record player to the line in jack of your sound card. Set the volume as low as possible on the walkman to avoid overloading the line input!

As last resort, connect microphone to your sound card, and record them late at night when there is less background noise.

Once you have them in MP3 or WAV format on your harddrive, converting them to CDA format and creating a CD is the same as it would be for downloaded music.

See your operating system help menu or music program for details on recording MP3 and/or WAV files. Windows Sound Recorder isn't the best choice, but it should suffice if youhave nothing else. What very little recording I've done was done with "Music Match Jukebox" in the unregistered trial version.

 

[Cuckolded_BlK_Male]

I can't get my computer to defrag. I don't know what to do. I don't even know if i'm posting this in the right area
The other night i went to my system tools and clicked on defrag and i fell asleep. I woke up about 6 hours later and it was still only on 3%. I don't know why it takes forever. I do a scan disk and a cleaning of my temp internet files once a week. I have no problem with that. But defragging, my goodness..Grrrr. Could one of you computer savvy people possibly help me? Or maybe give me a suggestion as to what's causing this?

Thanks.

Reformat and partition your hard drive ... then install Net BSD ... Problem solved.

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Re: Computer help needed!!

Reformat and partition your hard drive ... then install Net BSD ... Problem solved.

Que es "Net BSD?"

"Reformat and partition" usually involves the loss of updates and data because of the hassle of a complete backup -- not something that I'd recommend just because disk access is slowing down.

 

[Cuckolded_BlK_Male]

Re: Re: Re: Computer help needed!!

Que es "Net BSD?"

"Reformat and partition" usually involves the loss of updates and data because of the hassle of a complete backup -- not something that I'd recommend just because disk access is slowing down.

Net BSD is a Unix-like Operating system derived from BSD Unix.

As to reformatting the hard drive, I couldn't imagine going more than a year under a Microsoft operating system without doing a clean install. I am of course assuming that the person in the original post has had her system for some time and never reformatted the hard drive. I've never found it any hassle at all to back up my personal files or even whole partitions. I just mirror copy the partitions onto another Hard drive. As to software packages I prefer to cleanly install them, rather than merely backing them up. Since I routinely save all of my software updates on CDRs (such as WinXP SP1) I don't have the problem of trying to find updates.

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Computer help needed!!

Net BSD is a Unix-like Operating system derived from BSD Unix.

As to reformatting the hard drive, I couldn't imagine going more than a year under a Microsoft operating system without doing a clean install. I am of course assuming that the person in the original post has had her system for some time and never reformatted the hard drive. I've never found it any hassle at all to back up my personal files or even whole partitions.

Thanks for the info.

FWIW, I'm running Win 98SE and have been for nearly three years without formatting. I run scandisk and defrag at irregular intervals and periodically move/recreate my virtual memory file and have very few problems.

You're obviously a "power user" who knows a good bit more than the average person about computers and operating systems. However, most people aren't and reformatting is the equivalent of starting over from scratch -- a last ditch resort.

 

[Cuckolded_BlK_Male]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Computer help needed!!

Thanks for the info.

...most people aren't and reformatting is the equivalent of starting over from scratch -- a last ditch resort.

Well, that is just regular yearly maintainance on a windows system for me. Windows, especially win9x, degrades over time. Files get corrupted, the registry gets bloated, etc ...

By the way, why are you running win98SE? older hardware??? You can easily lay your hands on WinXP Pro for free, if you are so inclined.