98 PageFile

[ahoodin7]

I am trying to run a defrag on old windows 98. An old Laptop. I am in safe mode, and I have virtual memory shut off. In windows 98, that is how you shut off the page file. I am pretty sure that there are no other apps running. I keep getting these messages..."Hard disks contents changed...restarting blah blah. What could it be a virus? I already virus scanned. Spyware?

Any Ideas?

ahoodin

 

[jimp56]

thats one of the greatest mysteries of win98 i have ever encountered. i have seen it often and could never come up with an acceptable solution. some process running in the background accesses the disk, causing scandisk to restart.

one workaround i have found (which is expensive for the long term) is to install executive software's diskeeper program. it will run the defrag no matter what, and does a better job of it. you can download a 30-day free trial to get 1-2 defrags out of it, but would have to buy it in the long run.

http://www.execsoft.com/downloads/menu.aspx

 

[cdogg]

Although safe mode is one of the "sure-fire" ways of getting around scandisk and defrag restart issues, some items can still be running that cause problems.

First of all, do a CTRL-ALT-DEL in safe mode and make sure "nothing" but explorer is listed there (that's right, get rid of Systray too). Turn your screensaver off. Turn any power-save options off. Try a scandisk standard and then a scandisk thorough to make sure there aren't any problems on the drive.

If that still doesn't help, go to Start->Run, type msconfig, hit OK, and disable everything on the startup tab. Reboot back into safe mode and try again. At this point, there should be no system process interfering.

Note: It is not necessary to disable virtual memory (page file). Defragmenter identifies the swap file area and does not allow that to interfere. As a matter of fact, having no swapfile can actually cause "more" problems and cause it to run painfully slow.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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