K.

Had a little Google during my lunchbreak and the first thread that came up was:-

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

Do you think this business about moving "all the data area up to a 4K boundary" is important. If it is then I don't fancy his method as I don't have a floppy drive on my laptop.

Otherwise, as you say, it's deadly simple.

TP

By not having all the data aligned with a 4k boundary, Windows is forced to use a cluster size (i.e. the smallest size of disk that can be allocated to a file) of 512 bytes rather than the optimal 4KB. This means that files might tend to fragment more easily and there might be a slight drop in performance.

On the other side of the coin however, the NTFS file system is hugely more reliable than FAT. For instance with FAT, if Windows crashes, when you reboot it will spend a few minutes checking the file system and coming out with orphaned clusters etc. That no longer happens with NTFS.

Also I converted from FAT to NTFS before knowing of the issue and the PC worked happily for years.

K.

I'm sold.

But, I'll be a good lad and back up first.

TP

When I've stopped double posting.........

K.

I converted the laptop to NTFS last night. No apparent problems and quite a fast procedure.

Opt.

I installed the Pro version of Diskeeper. It did its stuff and now wants to defrag my C drive in what it calls its Boot mode. There is still quite a patch of red on the chart and I presume this is what the inbuilt XP defragger was failing to sort.

Diskeeper says it wants to do a chkdsk first and warns me that the whole operation could take some time. On that basis I'll set it to run when we are about to go to bed - and hope it does not ask any questions half way through.

Thanks to both of you for the pointers.

TP

Any techie types help please???
I am told that my system is slowing down and taking a long time to open and close due to windows habit of collecting a shedfull of registry errors. I scanned the web and used a couple of those free registry scanners. Each pinpointed over 600 errors, but would not correct them without me parting with lots of hard earned. I am loathe to do this with software I do not know.
So 2 questions. Are they conning me and there are no registry errors and can anyone recommend a registry repair programme that is either free or very trustworthy, or both.
TIA
Alan

alan. I see no-ones talking to you so I'll just put my twopenneth in before the (very helpful) clever buggers appear. :-)
VCom Fix -It 7 Professional is about 29. I've used it for about 4 or 5 years. It gives you anti-virus protection (with free updates for a year), anti-spyware, disc cleaner, disc checker, etc etc.
It also defrags discs and registry's and fixes registry errors.
It gives you 3 levels of registry error fixing Green - safe. Orange - Your choice and Red option - Are you really sure? You can un-fix as well. (I always tick 'em all after a back up).
It's been pretty good for me but I don't know what the guys in here think about it.
Personal recommendation only. It does what it says on the tin!
http://www.v-com.com/

hewittalan, this Microsoft download will dramatically reduce the shutdown delay. It works by itself, just install it and forget about it. It doesn't work with Vista at present I think though, so remember if you upgrade.

User Profile Hive Cleanup

Personally I think these registry scanners are a con. If there were serious errors in the registry, your system wouldn't start at all. Not sure where you got the phrase "due to windows habit of collecting a shedfull of registry errors," but if it's from a site trying to sell you something I would discount it :-)

Apart from downloading the UPH cleaner, you should look at your memory usage (Task Manager/Performance tab bar graph) and see whether most/all of your memory is in use. Also look critically in your system tray and check you actually need everything running there.

Kayak. What I find strange about supposed registry errors (XP home) is that, using my Fix-It utility, it shows missing links for, for example, a deleted jpg image. Apparently this is an XP thing.

Never come across that Bolshi, but I'm still on Windows 2000 :-)

Thanks for the help guys.
I will beaver away this weekend and try and sort it out.
alan

K. I find that utilities give me the illusion of being in control of my PC a bit.

I suppose they're like women's boobs. Not much use, but fun to play around with.

Windows 2000 indeed!

:-))

women's boobs are like train sets.

They are meant for the kids, but the dads end up playing with them.

Haystack....LOL!

Kayak and Optimist,

I've done my NTFS convert and run the Pro Version of Diskeeper a few times.

I do find its reports a little odd. I'll post the chart of my disk C: and the two parts of the report. All I did after my most recent defrag was to browse a few sites using Opera and I seem to have generated 70 fragmented files.

Also all that red on the chart looks scarey to me and the report is giving me a Warnning that my drive is 'heavily fragmented'. Five minutes ago I was told I was healthy!

And what about all those 1,849 excess fragments? Should I be getting rid of these?

Optimist. I'd be interested to know how much red you see in your report of the drive.

These are the three screen shots:-



TP

Any thoughts on using MSN messenger. I've become El Presidente of my spanish owners community and want an easy way to communicate with all the owners. This has been suggested but I've zero experience here.
Also I think I can do live meetings online with the administator of the community? Is this better than say Skype?
TIA wise ones :-)

TP, there will be a button to tell you the names of the files that are fragmented. You can then see where the problem lies. It is normal for stuff to get fragmented just by rebooting, particularly Windows system files, but you might have an application that is particularly bad at it. Ensure that you do at least one defragmentation scheduled for reboot.

The moral of the story is that there is no point in getting hung up about fragmentation: there will always be some. Diskeeper has an option to keep files defragmented automatically if you pay for the higher versions, Shield or something, but I do think it is all much ado about nothing.

K>

" there will be a button to tell you the names of the files that are fragmented."

Yes, looked at it again and almost all the fragments are in hiberfil.sys.

It is marked Excluded and I think in the depths of the Help files there is a reference to not being able to defragment it.

EDIT. And now I see the reference. It is to do with the hibernation and cannot be cleaned up.


So, that points to the reason why I can remove all but the 1.714 fragments that this sys file contains.

TP

TP, try turning off Hibernate support (control panel/power options) then rebooting, you should be able to delete the hiberfil.sys file then, and then defragment and turn on hibernate support again if you want it. I would have thought that the file would then be allocated as one fragment. It is as big as the main memory you have since it serves to dump the main memory to disk on hibernation.

K.

Wow. What a change. In fact the sys file gets deleted as soon as you turn off hibernate.

I wonder why Diskeeper don't say you should turn it off in their Help instructions - and then turn it on again.

Look at the three pictures now:-



I certainly owe you a pint for this one.

Thanks a million.

TP