Maintenance Wizard - never seems to pass 1%

My OS is Win98. I have Maintenance Wizard scheduled to run every Sat evening between 12:00 and 3:00a.m. Whenever the disk defrag utility starts up, the "progress bar" starts normally at 0%, system buzzes and hums for 30-45 seconds, progress bar gets as far as 1% then immediately returns to 0%! This process keeps repeating and the progress bar *never* gets beyond 1%. Then frustration sets in and I click on Cancel. Suggestions?

John Heitz
Mechanicville, NY USA
jeheitz@acmenet.net

 

This has always been a problem. MS still had the Task Scheduler enabled by default in ME, too, but seems to have abandon that idea with XP.

In order for defrag (and sometimes scandisk, especially if there are any problems to fix) to ever finish is pretty much to be sure no other apps are running. Every time something writes to the disk, defrag starts over.

Start in Safe Mode and start the Maintenance Wizard manually before you go to bed.

 

Reply to Abraxas

Thanks much! I'll give it a try. Glad to know that I'm not the only one who has experienced this phenomenon.

John Heitz

 

Well John H, I had the same problem. I contacted Compaq Tech Support and they told me to go to the System Configuraton Utility and select the Startup tab. Then uncheck all items except, Scan Registry and Systray. Click OK. You will be asked to restart your computer. Click Yes. After computer restarts, perform Maintenance Wizard. It should speed this up.

Steps to perform:
1. Click START
2. Click RUN
3. Type in: MSCONFIG
4. Click OK
5. When System Config. Utility opens, select STARTUP tab.
6. Then uncheck all, but Scan Registry & Systray.
7. Click OK
8. After computer is restarted, run the Maintenance Wizard.
9. When completed, you MUST go back to The Sys. Config. Utility.
and recheck everything. Then restart for the last time.

I hope this helps.
Regards, Rick2U

 

Problem with Maintenance Wizard

Rick2U: Thanks for your suggestion. It works just fine! I added one thing, however. I discovered that not disabling a Screen Saver first is not wise. When it "kicks in ", it writes to the hard disk. If that occurs after the defrag is in progress, then the defrag utility goes back to 0% and starts over! So...before I start the process you have suggested, "Disable Screen Saver" is first.

Thanks very much for your input.

John Heitz

 

Applying this regisrty patch will result in the screensaver being automatically disabled during defrag.