ccomputer problems

Factual Questions
1

I just spent 2 hours scan disking and defraging this computer.
Something is writing to the disk and I cannot figure what.
I disabled everything that had the option and set my screen options to 60 minutes.
I have limited computer skills so its probably something I haven’t thought of or don’t know how to do.
The guy that upgraded this computer noted the problem but didn’t do anything about it.Something about windows I think.
Its taking longer and longer to scan and defrag.

How do you find whats writing all the time???

Any ideas or instructions would sure be appreciated.

2

Wow
Don’t know what happened .
Tuba
would you please deleat one of these posts and insert it in the appropriate forum?
I started to post in GQ but got here instead.

3

Did you run scandisk from DOS or Windows? If the latter you should reboot in DOS and enter scandisk c: /surface at the prompt. This will scan the entire surface of your hard drive, and any bad clusters will be marked with Bs on the diagram. If there are any you should back up your data immediately and get a new hard drive.

The Windows version of scandisk is comparatively unhelpful and doesn’t give this kind of feedback.

You can also download diagnostic programs from most of the major drive manufacturers’ websites. These are your best bet if your drive is formatted with NTFS.

4

What version of Windows do you have?

Sometimes it helps to run ScanDisk and Defrag in Safe Mode. You do this by rebooting (restart) and holding down the F8 key at the same time. It’ll bring up a little white-on-black menu, and you put in “Safe Mode”. Then it brings up the Desktop looking weird, because it’s running with only the bare minimum–everything else is switched off. Then you do Scandisk and Defrag.

Then after you’re done with ScanDisk and Defrag, you restart again to bring the desktop back to where it’s supposed to be.

5

This is a common problem with Windows. Defrag sometimes runs indefinitely, and Scandisk keeps restarting.

Safe Mode, as mentioned, sometimes helps. If you can’t get it to work in Safe Mode, get this program called Power Defrag. It’s awesome (YMMV) and easily fixes this common Windows error.

Go to http://www.download.com and do a search for “Power Defrag” for your version of Windows or click this link:

http://download.com.com/3000-2086-10134739.html?tag=lst-0-1

6

Addendum: Forgot to mention that Power Defrag does a Scandisk operation as well.

7

Thanks all.
its windows 95
Scan disk was run from windows.

8

What is writing to the disk? That could be a few things, but you need to give more info, what kind of computer is this? how fast & how much memory? If you don’t have enough memory, windoz is always writing to the disk cause it has to use the swap file becuz there isn’t enough physical memory.

9

Were you connected to the Net?

10

What did he upgrade? Did it have anything to do with Office XP or Publisher 2002?

11
      • Do note: the Windows defragger runs very, very slow. For the first 20-30 minutes, it only moves single packets at a time. The Norton Utilities one runs way faster and has more options besides.
        ~
12

Its a Basterdized gateway.
New mother board
New amd Athlon Thunderbird 700 mhz CPU
New S3 Savage 4 video card
New 32X CD Rom
New 250 W pwr supply
New 64MB SDRAM
AMD Athlon 192 MB Ram
System resources says its 61% free—whatever that means

13

Chances are its something running in the background that is writing and defrag has to restart repeatdly to adjust to the changes.

Hit Control+Alt+Delete and end everything except Explorer and Systray (I think). And make sure theres nothing in the taskbar. Especially stop any anti-virus programs and screen savers. Good luck.

14

I have this problem, and second Obvious Guy’s post. I have to Ctrl+Alt+Delete and end all tasks except Explorer, then it runs ok.

15

I would also check to see if you had anything in the Run= line of you win.ini, check your autoexec.bat file for anything unusual, and go to start, run, and type in msconfig, and click on the startup tab, if you have a computer savy friend send him a screenshot (ctrl + print screen) or make a physical list and post it here. Does it seem your system takes an unusually long time to boot?

16

Scandisk and defrag won’t really help you here if there is some program starting up with your PC. With your system resources that low it can mean you have stuff loading at startup you don’t necessarily want.

With Windows 95 its a little tougher to get at startup programs, you will need to edit your registery.

BE VERY CAREFUL HERE, DAMAGING YOUR REGISTERY CAN CAUSE LOTS OF PROBLEMS:

Start, Run, type in REGEDIT

Navigate to:

HKEY_Local_Machine
SOFTWARE
MICROSOFT
WINDOWS
CURRENT_VERSION
RUN

Inside the run key will be one spot programs can be run at startup. Some of that stuff you may need, others could be spyware or other junk you don’t. You can delete the programs you don’t need at startup (RealPlayer comes to mind amoung many, many others), but its preferable to have an expert handy just in case. Also, check under Programs/Startup (under your Start button) and make sure there’s nothing in there you don’t want too.

Good luck!

17

Bingo
Real Player.
I’ll bet thats it.
I don’t feel comfortable messing with it myself. I’ll find some help and dump real player.
Thanks

18

You can do it pretty safely yourself, in the run box type: msconfig

This should work for w95 to XP, but i don’t remember if W95 has it.

Then select startup & find the realplayer start up & deselect it & restart your computer. Then if you want it again, just run msconfig again & select it, the box is there to do that again.