Defrag Win98

I have an old computer on which I run Win98 (grand kids us it for games). I want to defrag the disk but defran will not run. It starts and attempts to run but it just cycles over and over without making any progress. I have plenty of room on the hard drive. Any ideas??????

 

Hey Ralph

Welcome to the best the WindowsBBS!

OK especially in 95 98 and ME there are a lot of things that can interfere with defrag.

It is not clear what is happening to you as you say it actually don't even get started.

Usually it is something like Virus Scanner or even a Virus or Spy/Adware or some legit program.

But what usually happens is one of these things are accessing the disk during a defrag.

Defrag can stand 9 but not 10 if it does get this far it will warn you of these disk accsesses and ask for permission to continue.

You should not try to defrag a cluttered system, why defrag temp files?

So do this download install but do not run the best cleaners:

DCleaner http://www.majorgeeks.com/DCleaner_d4790.html
when run check all boxes run twice

CCleaner get the slim version http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds.aspx
Click bottom right Run Cleaner twice
then in left panel click issues then below Scan for issues run twice or until no more found

Then reboot to pure dos mode and do type following:
(exactly print this so you will have it) (the below is not as complex as it looks and is hundreds of times faster than doing it in Windows additionally it cleans things Windows can not).

smartdrv
del c:\windows\*.tmp
deltree /y c:\windows\cookies
deltree /y c:\windows\history
deltree /y c:\windows\temp
deltree /y c:\windows\tempor~1
deltree /y c:\win386.swp
deltree /y c:\windows\win386.swp
deltree /y c:\windows\taskmon.exe
deltree /y c:\windows\shelli*.*
deltree /y c:\ffast*.*
deltree /y c:\progra~1\micros~1\office\1033\findfast.*
deltree /y c:\windows\downlo~1\*.*
deltree /y c:\windows\offlin~1\*.*
deltree /y c:\windows\applic~1\micros~1\office\shortc~1\off*. tmp
deltree /y c:\windows\applic~1\micros~1\office\shortc~1\des*. tmp
deltree /y c:\windows\applic~1\micros~1\office\recent\*.*
deltree /y c:\windows\applog

Then just ctrl alt del to reboot

Then reboot to "safe" mode.
Reboot tap F8 key repeatedly while coming back up do this during the black screen before windows begins, on menu choose Safe Mode "not safe mode with networking ".

Run the new downloaded programs above in the order as above.

After they complete try to defrag while still in Safe Mode.

Get back to us with the results.

Mike

 

To Mike

Hi Mike, Don't know if this will get to you or not but thinks for the help. Your instructions allowed me to defrag my old Win98 OS.
Thanks again, Ralph

 

I got it Ralph thanks for letting us know.

Hope you did "all" of the steps.

You would be suprised how many we help that never even let us know!

Ralph this cleanup should have helped performance also.

Mike