defrag and scandisk

[ldb]

I am running Windows ME on a PC that is about 2 years old. I have tried to run a defrag on my system several times. I know it can take quiet a bit of time to do this so I have let it run all night 3 or 4 times. It won't get past 3%.....and sometimes won't even get that far. And this is after running for almost 12 hours! Sometimes is tells me I need to run a scandisk to fix some errors. I am having the same problem when I run scandisk. Scandisk tells me that things are running in the background that won't let it complete. But I have everything closed down except for scandisk and it still won't complete. What could be the problem?

[Outlaw]

Have you tried it in safe mode yet?

[ldb]

No, did not know you could do that. Could you tell me how?

[Outlaw]

Turn on (or restart) your pc. Then before windows starts loading, keep pressing the F8 key. A little menu should come up where you can choose to start windows in safe mode.

Windows doesn't load any drivers or programs in safe mode, so it should be able to complete scandisk and defrag this way.

[Keeter]

you can also check your msconfig to see what programs are starting during startup. You can also ctrl+alt+del and close everything but explorer and systray before you start scandisk or defrag.

[ldb]

Thanks! This did the trick. It took a few tries but it finally completed the scandisk and defrag. Thanks again!!!