Can't Defrag, NOW WHAT?

[Caveman]

I run Win 98 Scandisk and defrag on a regular basis (once/week and always before I install a new piece of software) to keep a clean system.

Last night it stopped about 1/2 way through a defrag because it said I had a disk error and to run scandisk first. I did with no "unfixable" problems. Then I ran defrag with the same results. I repeated this procedure getting anywhere from 10%-96% through the defrag process before I got the error message.

Now what?

Does this mean an impending HD failure? Is there anyway to fix this?

 

[AmdEmAll]

Are you running it in windows? Make nothing is running while you do it. Safemode is the best way to do it.

 

[madthumbs]

If your running any mcafee software, that may cause it also.

 

[Caveman]

Yes, running it in windows 98 although not Safemode. Everything's off but systray and explorer...:frown:

 

[Caveman]

Addendum: Not using any McCaffe Software or any other TSRs

 

[Dee67]

When you ran scandisk, did that include a surface scan too?

 

[Caveman]

YES, I used the "thorough" option w/ surface scan...

 

[divinemartyr]

if you can do it, clean format and reinstall. If you get bad sectors on the disk then you've got a surface error on the disk that is uncorrectable. What sort of hard drive are you using? I've heard errors like this with lots of Western Digital drives, do you happen to have one? Anyhow, clean format and reinstall should be a safe bet.

divinemartyr

 

[Roguetech]

I've had problems similiar. It seems like I've had the same problem, but perhaps it's just all those times Scandisk counldn't fix the problems... At any rate, try another scanner, like Nuts & Bolts Disk Minder, or Norton Disk Doctor. Also, try both the DOS and Windows scandisk.

 

[GregMal]

Try booting into Safe Mode and running scandisk from there.....
Otherwise I'd boot to DOS and scandisk from there....
Greg

 

[nickburns]

i had a similar problem, the program would tell me that it had to stop several times due to other programs, even when nothing else was running, so i tried a free program like power defrag and it worked finr (you can get it off the maximum pc cd)