Kudos to Defrag!

Hi!

It's been quite some time since I've dropped in here but I simply had to post this to you all. Most of you will be well aware of this but for the benefit of those who aren't here it goes:

I am a stickler for keeping my PC in a perfect state of tune. I was given a rude awakening this week.

A few days ago, I noticed that I was starting to get a slow response time whenever I right-clicked any file or folder in Windows Explorer. Then, right out of the blue, Norton System Works starts taking about 3 minutes to load all its components after a restart, stalling things up very badly.

I go for a System Restore, to no avail. I run my usual virus scan, spyware scan, trojan sweep, and my registry cleaning program (RegSupreme). No dice. Things were getting much worse and fast. I do the uninstall and reinstall of System Works twice, again to no avail at all. I go to the Symantec site and find no help there for the slow loading problem. Please keep in mind that System Works was the only program acting up. I then perform a System File check (sfc /scannow).

Finally, knowing fully well that its been a while since I defragged my C drive, I gave it a thought. Never having seen earth shattering results from one, I didn't expect much difference to be made. I set up Diskeeper (my defrag program) to sort through my C drive for the night.

I got up this morning and restarted my computer. Everything runs as before, like a scalded dog, including System Works!

So there you go. Shame on me. I have never yet seen the true fruits of a defrag, nor did I ever think that such results can be had from one. One program was causing all the grief, leading anyone to believe that it was the program itself. Far from the truth, in that a defrag cleared it all up for me.

Believe it or not, this was my experience and so I thought I would share it for the benefit of anyone who might come across this post.

Thanx for taking the time to read this, everyone. Just pitching my two bits into the forum.

Have a great new year!

Randy

 

After having used Symantec's Norton SystemWorks for many years and, more lately, just Norton Utilities, I've finally decided that they deserve no space on my computer. I'm sure that others will disagree with me, but I don't like the way that Symantec's products seem to want to take over my computer. Besides, I really don't need a suite of utilities to do my housekeeping chores.

Without taking sides on the defrag issue (I've never found that it helps, but defraggers at work are fun to watch ... for awhile ), this sidebar from PC World's 5 February 2004 article on PC utilities may be of interest.

 

There may be a defragger out ther I haven't tried, but I don't think so. Diskeeper, O&O, VoptXP, SpeedDisk, V-COM (OnTrack), etc.

Rarely did I notice a lot of improvement except when the fragmentation level got very high.

There are subtle things that I notice after a defrag---one app a little slower, one a little faster, the tray icons in a different order, etc.

I just got O&O v.6 to see how that worked---it's just 5 with a nicer GUI.

Over all, I am happiest with Diskeeper. It allows for defrag any time the screensave somes on and so I don't need to think about it. And I have friends install it because some of them never defrag at all (What's that?). And--I think things are actually a little faster afterward.

But all the defarggers work just fine and there is no objective superiority of one over another. I suppose if you always use just 2 apps on your machine, how they are placed on the disk makes a difference. But no defragger can predict a user's habits well enough to be perfect. All defraggers put the pieces together, no matter what the individual theory of fragmentation.

But all it takes it one app with parts strewn all over the drive to slow things down a lot.

 

You will get NO DISAGREEMENT from me. Since the last update ( including Verisign errors ) on two machines I have had all kinds of problems.

As soon as I uninstalled Norton the on one machine it took off like a rocket. Even faster than it did before.

I do not know for sure but if Norton had anything to do with it but the two machines that had Norton on them will not re-connect to the LAN. They don't see themselves let alone any of the other two.

I was using NSW and/or NAV 2003.

As to defrag. The only drive that I ever bother to defrag is the C: Drive. And then only after adding or removing software.

The C: drive is the only drive that I see that realy gets torn up too badly.

Fragmentation is the one of several reasons that I keep the C: drive to a minimum required size. Usually around 6gig. Data protection is the main reason.

BillyBob

 

I not only agree with Jim and BillyBob about Norton, I'll take it a step further and put it in the same class as AOL..................it should be removed from EVERY computer and replaced with something that doesn't tie up resources, make more changes to the registry than anyone really wants to know, and in the end, usually causes more problems than it will ever be worth.

As for defragging, my first HD was an OEM 20GB with only 1 partition and with quite a few users installing and removing programs, it became badly fragmented fairly quickly and performance went downhill just as fast. A defrag always sped things up and put errors back where they belong........in never-never land.

 

I was going to make the AOL comparison, but thought I'd be taking it too far. Well, now it's out there.

Both seem to have a "scorched Earth" policy related to uninstalling. Both seem to think that if enough damage is done by uninstalling, then people will be afraid to uninstall, or will reinstall, just to get things working again.

How long has Norton required people to go to their site and search for "uninstall" apps in order to completely get rid of things? Surely they could have built that into the uninstallers they supply with the apps!

I use Norton's WinDoctor to clean the registry and eliminate unused shortcuts. That is the extent of my allowing their software near my computer. I've had too many problems in the past with my own computer and others I've worked on. The cure is worse than the disease.

 

I quit using Symantec's SystemWorks/Norton Utilities when I discovered that SpeedDisk messed up the partition information so that PowerQuest's PartitionMagic could no longer read it, and PM became unusable. For me, partitioning was more important than defragging, so out went Norton.

Ironically, on 5 December 2003 PowerQuest was acquired by Symantec ... one more little guy down the tubes.

 

My second two bits (50cents now)

Wow!

I never thought a simple thing like my defrag post could yield so much good info.

From Christer's link to another thread on his first post, I learned a lot and unchecked both boxes. I wondered why, suddenly, MS Word was requesting a virus scan every time I opened an old doc.

Although I like what Norton does for me, I must admit that everyone here is very right. The proof was in the pudding when I went to do the uninstall & reinstall. I wonder what part of "uninstall" this company didn't understand. There are 3 uninstalls, from Control Panel, to be done with regard to System Works 2003. After that, a manual deletion in Windows Explorer is required. After that, RegSupreme is cleaning up after System Works, big time and still to no full uninstalled status.

Truth be known, though, my problem was simple and I believe it was Abraxus who nailed it by commenting on how it only takes one app to get scrambled to cause a lot of grief.

I'm still running fine up here. My problem definitely was a defrag issue. It wasn't the Live Update or anything else about System Works that killed me. It was the 2 to 4 minutes to load autoprotect before my desktop could load versus mere seconds before the problem occured. It was also the 2 to 3 minutes it took to so much as even open the general System Works window.

Say what you will about defrag programs but Diskeeper bailed me out of something I thought to be much more sinister than it really was. I will go out on a limb here and just guess that pretty much any defrag program, including XP's may well have done the same thing for me.

It's just that I've never actually noticed any wild results from a defrag before......always subtle changes here and there. I just wanted to share that. Now, thanx to you all, I have tweaked a couple of other areas in my PC.

You people are just too good, you know that???

Thanx a million for the heads up and the banter. PeteC.....I shall certainly be looking into your bit of wisdom about Diskeeper....thanx!

Sorry to the mods for having posted something that turned out to be kind of a third party software topic in the XP forum but, really, it happened within my XP OS so maybe it's all good???

Randy

 

I guess that I shall stand corrected, then, Christer.

I shall re-read the whole thread and links from the thread in order to better understand the whole thing. Thanx for digging right into the issue the way you all did.

Randy

 

Can't argue with that. Slow down due to fragmentation has always been a gradual process for me, one hardly noticed until it gets bad.