Defrag problems

Hi,
I'm new to this forum.
I'm having a problem defraging my hard drive on 98 OS. Message that pops up is" can't defrag drive because it contains errors that must be repaired" Click help which sends you to "Scan Disk" command; after doing this and selecting "standard" scan ( have also done thorough scan) the message recd is" scan disk unable to finish correcting error because top level folder on drive is full. Delete files from folder and restart scan disk."

Help.. I don't know where or what the top level folder is!!

I have checked the other postings and have tried doing this in Safe Mode which didn't work. Any other suggestions?
Thanks.

 

Scandisk has bumped into a file whose name is longer than 259 characters AND you had autofix selected.

Run scandisk again. This time with autofix OFF (my personal preference, since I then get to see the errors before scandisk "tries" to "fix" them).

Scandisk will give you an error about this particular file. Just select ignore (or delete, if it is a file that you know can be deleted).

These long files can occur within the IE cache.

Before running scandisk again, go to IE and empty the cache.

IE > Tools > Internet Options > Delete Files (and select Delete Offline Content)

(**Also while you are in this area, click the Settings button, and if the size of the cache (temporary internet files folder) is more than 10MBs, make it 10MBs)

 

Thank you so much. It finally worked. I did find the long file and deleted it. I'm curious as to why you suggested setting the cache size on temporary internet folder to only 10MBs; we had it set at 98MGs. Will we now get a message when this file is full and be prompted to deleter all those cookies, etc. We try to delete this folder on a semi-regular basis.

Anyway, thanks again.

 

No, no errors.

IE really only needs a cache around 10MBs, give or take. Any more than that is a waste of disk space, and can result in some sluggish browsing.

When the cache is full, IE will automatically start to get rid of some of the older items in order to allow it to cache newer ones.