[Meri]

I again find myself turning to this community for help.

I am trying to repair an old, but critical DOS machine (it's a protocol analyzer, so can only run DOS).

I would like to defrag the harddrive, but when I enter that command, the machine immediately hangs. I don't get an error message, it just shows "MicroSoft defrag for MS-DOS / Copyright 1988 - 1993 Symantec Corp." and that just sits there. The machine completely freezes, even the keyboard, so I can't ctrl / alt / del out of it, I can only reset the power switch.

I've reinstalled DOS 6.22, and it still happens.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[TheOutcaste]

Can you run scandisk?
I don't know if it tries to enumerate that attached devices before the GUI comes up, but it may be getting hung waiting for a response from a defective drive. A bad floppy drive is the first thing that comes to mind, so if the system has a floppy, is it functional?

[Meri]

Thanks for your rsponse, Outcaste.

I can, in fact, run ScanDisk. I had run it the other day, when I was first trying to resurrect this machine. ScanDisk fournd and fixed some errors.

When I re-ran it again this morning, it found no errors. After running SD again today, I tried DEFRAG again, but got the same results (it hangs w/o error message and even kills the keyboard).

The floppy drive is working fine.

...any other suggestions...?

[TheOutcaste]

Are you specifying the drive letter on the command line? IF not, give that a try:
Defrag C:
Just a couple of guesses, but give these options a try, both with and without spceifying the drive letter:
Defrag C: /g0
That's a zero. This disables the graphical mouse and character set. If that character set is missing or damaged it could hang (Though you'd think a re-install would fix that)
Defrag C: /skiphigh
Prevents Defrag from using extended or upper memory. If this works there may be a problem with your extended memory configuration.