Ask the Expert

Why does my defragmentation stop?

I ran a computer test program called PCpitstop and it told me that my C drive is poor - apparently there is fragmentation of the files. I tried to run the defragmenting program for Windows but the process goes to one percent and stops. I am only using twenty percent of the hard drive capacity (4 Gigs out of a 19 Gig total).

I wonder what is going on? The Computer is an Emachines 800 megahertz, with 19 Gigs of memory, and 256 megs of RAM. The machine works remarkably well for a low priced computer.
The first question to clarify is: what defragger are you running? The built-in one or a third-party tool? Maybe there is a file that is locked during the defrag process? Do you have any applications running while trying to defrag?

This was first published in June 2002

Join the conversationComment

Share
Comments

    Results

    Contribute to the conversation

    All fields are required. Comments will appear at the bottom of the article.