When I try to ‘defrag’, it stops after 57% and I get a message that sa

When I try to ‘defrag’, it stops after 57% and I get a message that says, “drive contents changed, restarting defrag”. Every time I try to defrag I keep getting the same message. Please help.
- Carol

This question was answered on April 29, 2002. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

The “Defrag” utility that is built into Windows (Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools) is designed to ‘defragment’ files that have been separated during the save process.

Think of your hard drive as a huge tic-tac-toe board with thousands of little compartments for storing data These compartments, known as ‘allocation units’ have a specific storage capacity that can range from 4K to 32K (based on your operating system).

Let’s say your hard drive has been created using 8K allocation units and you have a file to save that is 24K in size This means you will need 3 of the units in order to save the file Your operating system will find the first 3 available units and break the file up into three 8K units for storage If the first three available units are not ‘contiguous’ meaning right next to each other, the file is known as a fragmented file because it had to be stored in different parts of the hard drive.

The Defrag utility looks for these fragmented files and rearranges the units so that files are no longer split apart, which generally increases performance of the hard drive.

Because data is being moved around, the Defrag utility must have exclusive control of the hard drive so that data does not become corrupted (Imagine trying to reorganize a file cabinet while others are adding and removing files and folders.)

If Defrag is unable to complete the process, it generally means that another program accessed the hard drive during the Defrag process, causing it to either start over or stop altogether.

Programs such as screen savers, anti-virus programs or any utility that is running in the background can cause this interruption.

You have two choices for working around this problem The first is to manually turn off any utilities that are running (generally indicated by an icon next to your clock in the bottom right corner) by right clicking on the icon and looking for an exit, close or disable option.

Another method is to use the ‘Close Program’ interface which can be brought up by using the ‘three-fingered salute’ Ctrl-Alt-Del With the exception of ‘Explorer’ and ‘Systray’, everything that appears in the list can be shut down by highlighting it

and clicking on the End Task button Some items may require repeated attempts in order to force them to shutdown.

This process will only disable these programs during this session The next time you restart your system, which should be immediately after you finish defragging, they will automatically reload.

An easier method for most users is to restart the system in what is called ‘Safe Mode’ This is a diagnostic mode for Windows that only loads the basic essentials, so third party utilities, such as anti-virus programs, will not load.

Your system will look like it is ‘sick’ because it will be displayed at a very low resolution, but this is normal Run the defrag utility, and then restart your computer which will return it to its ‘real mode’.

For Windows 95 users, you can access a startup menu with the Safe Mode option by continuously tapping the F5 key during startup.

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP users can access a startup menu with the Safe Mode option by

continuously tapping the F8 key during startup.