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preferably free/shareware.

my windows one appears to be woefully inadequate, repeatedly restarting due to "drive contents changed". it got just over half way through a 9.5 gig drive (with only ~150MB free space) after approximately 16 hours. i know i have far too much stuff on the drive, but i'm trying to defrag before doing a system backup to an external drive and wiping my laptop clean. all this is a prelude to an OS upgrade from ME (yeah, i know ) to XP, and will also see the external drive almost permanently linked to my laptop.

of course, if the defrag tool isn't my problem then i'd appreciate some advice on what else i should be looking at.

btw - i've also done a virus/spyware scan with PCcillin 2005. i plan to do another run with a spybot/adaware combination just to be sure.

thanks in advance
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Posted: 2005-06-06 08:39:06
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There's a few listed here, but I can't vouch for any particular since since defragging is not something I really do these days.

http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/defragmentation.shtml

Have you tried defragging in safe mode? Or use msconfig to disable absolutely everything (start-up items, system ini, VxDs etc.)?
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Posted: 2005-06-06 09:43:34
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yeah, I used to defrag in safe mode on win98 and ME for this reason but the XP defragger doesn't seem to have this constant restart problem so its no longer an issue

edit: I remember the old days of Norton tools defragger where you could choose executables etc to put at the "front" of the disk for quicker access and all sorts of other options. Nortons tools were great in their time

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[ This Message was edited by: masseur on 2005-06-06 08:46 ]
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Posted: 2005-06-06 09:45:22
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hhhmmm.....

i might try another sweep for background malware, then a defrag in safe mode and see what happens.

thanks for the advice.
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Posted: 2005-06-06 09:58:40
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I don't think it's malware, more Windows ME's hopless memory management, it uses the swap file when it doesn't need to, hence why the disk contents change so regularly.

If you do think it's malware, go the msconfig route. just tick 'selective startup' and untick everything else. That way, only the basic windows components start up and nothing else
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Posted: 2005-06-06 10:15:14
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ok, thanks
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Posted: 2005-06-06 10:20:34
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good grief!

after running the defrag a couple of times in safe mode (and boy, was that quicker than i'd ever seen before), my meagre 150MB of disk free space turned into 1.5 GB! i figured i'd gain a bit of space, but not even nearly that much. the hd must have been seriously jumbled.
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Posted: 2005-06-07 08:15:03
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