My scheduled monthly defragmenting started at 12:30 today and still was running at 5;;30 pm. Why would it take so long? I am running Windows 98. It was connected to the internet. Would that be the problem? I could set it for the middle of the night but I always shut it down when I finish using it each day. Any answers would be appreciated.

Defrag on Win98 runs faster when active in safe mode as there are no programs trying to access your drive, hence pausing the defrag.

Thank you for your help. I have been using Scheduled tasks for defragging for years and this never happened before but I don't think I was connected to the internet when it started to defrag either, so wondered if that would slow it down. I will remember about F8 next time.

Hi,
I also use Win98SE, and defrag will run much, much faster, doing these beforehand:
1. Go to Control Panel, then Power Management, and set Monitor for turn off "Never".
2. Turn off wallpaper.
3. Go to Control Panel, System, Performance, Virtual Memory, and Turn Off Virtual Memory. (This allows the virtual memory swap file to be defragged).
Then, as others said, run in SafeMode.
You may not even have to "schedule" Defrag, cause doing the above lets in run much, much faster.
Best of luck.

Thanks fredg, you have helped me in the past and I will try your suggestions the next time I defrag.

If you have been using Scheduled tasks for defragging for years and this never happened before, perhaps there is spyware on the computer. I would suggest downloading Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4, a program that removes spyware, available from:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...d,22262,00.asp

Once installed, enable Tea Timer. Open the Spybot Search & Destroy, click the "+" sign next to Tools on the left side of the screen, click System Startup, then on the right side of the page check HK_CU Run Spybot Tea Timer.

The Resident TeaTimer is a new tool of Spybot-S&D which perpetually monitors the processes called/initiated. It immediately detects known malicious processes wanting to start and terminates them giving you some options, how to deal with this process in the future.

Check for updates before running. If you have trouble getting the updates, near the top of the Update Window, click the little arrow next See-Cure #1(Europe), highlight the next one on the list, See-Cure #2 and try to download the updates. If that doesn't work, try the next one the list. Until you get one you can download from. Being a free program, if too many people are using the same site to download the updates, some people will not get them.

I do have Spybot Search & Destroy 1.4 downloaded on my computer and have been using it for a year or so. however, I can't find Tea Timer. I will have my son-in-law help me with it. Thanks for your help.

The directions for locating Tea Timer are:

Open the Spybot Search & Destroy, click the "+" sign next to Tools on the left side of the screen, click System Startup, then on the right side of the page check HK_CU Run Spybot Tea Timer.

The main thing is to check for updates before running a scan - very important.

I have just checked Spybot again. On the left hand side there are 6 HK_LM Run keys and 2 HK_LM Run Services keys, all activated, but no HK_CU keys. I don't think I am missing anything but I am not too computer "smart".

Check out the following for information:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/foru...howtutorial=43