Various approaches to getting Defrag to work are not so hot, you can tell by the discussion. SAFE mode is the best, but of course it trashes your desktop.
Personally I think it is MSTASK that is writing things to C: that is trashing DEFRAG, but any program that periodically writes to the drive being defragged will make idiot defrag restart.
RegHakr had a good one, in thread615-144489 RegHakr pointed out
[ul]
To defragment all your hard drives/partitions with no overhead (background programs running or TSRs/VXDs loaded), change to the \Tools\Mtsutil folder on your Win98 Setup cd-rom, and right-click on Defrag.inf. Select Install.
This will create a one-time entry (DEFRAG.EXE /ALL) under this Registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServicesOnce
Defrag will start automatically next time you boot, before the login prompt, therefore before any other program loads.
[/ul]
An easy way to package this and without digging up the CD is to make a file, call it DEFRAG.REG, you can snip it...
Code:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServicesOnce]
@="defrag /all /noprompt"
If you put it anywhere, say C:\stuff\defrag.reg, then the next time you want to defrag you just explorer to it and click-click. Reboot and Defrag will run before a lot of windows mud is loaded and perhaps Defrag will work. Worth a try.
Of course you can make a bat file
Code:
regedit c:\stuff\defrag.reg
It is easy.
