Disk Clean-up & Disk Defrag XP

[margie821]

I am unable to get Disk Cleanup or Disk Defragmenter to work. I have Window's XP professional.

 

[BTS '76]

try doing it in safe mode, tab the F8 button continously while the system is booting up, at the menu, choose safe mode and try defragging there.

 

[Elvandil]

What exactly happens when you try to do these?

If Disk Cleanup freezes at "Compress Old Files...", try this fix:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/deletecompressoldfiles.reg

Be sure to do a through chkdsk before trying to defrag (Start > Run: chkdsk /f. Answer "y" and reboot.).

 

[margie821]

Thanks Elvandil, but I'm a novice, what exactly does chkdsk mean? When I clicked on http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/reg...essoldfiles.reg it started to download a program. I didn't accept because I wasn't sure if it was something I was suppose to run that would correct the problem or not. Sorry, obviously I'm rather clueless to technology but rely on the wonderful people on hear to educate me Margie

 

[Elvandil]

The file from Kelly's Korner is a reg file that you will need to merge with your registry to fix the Disk Cleanup problem. Anything from Kelly is safe. You can just open it or save it and run it.

As far as chkdsk goes, it is the XP equivalent of scandisk for repairing disk errors. It can be accessed as a tool in the Properties menu of your drives in My Computer. But it is actually easier to do it from the Run box in the Start menu.

To check your C: drive, for example, go to the Run box and type:
chkdsk C: /f
A dialog will pop up and tell you that it can't fix errors while XP is running and ask if you like to do it on reboot. Type "y" and hit Enter. Your drive will be checked for errors the next time you boot. This is a definite improvement over scandisk's constant restarts, not to mention that after scandisk finished its repairs, it just continued the boot, possibly with defective data that it had just repaired having had already been used in the boot process.

Defrag won't run if there are disk errors. What message do you get when you try to run defrag?

 

[margie821]

Thank you Elvandil, I don't get any message when I try defrag it just doesn't work. I shall try what you recommended, chkdsk and see if it helps. Thanks

 

[margie821]

Thanks Elvandil I downloaded the file from Kelly's Corner, installed it then ran chkdsk C: /f and ran Disk Cleanup (it worked!) then ran Disk Defragment (it worked!). Thanks again. I alway's get wonderful advice on here. It's nice to have people to help us novices!! Margie

 

[Elvandil]

Great. Thank you for the followup.