I defragment the disk on my pc every week to keep it running efficiently but on the last occasion the process could not be completed and various files were left unfragmented. Tried to find a free programm to download to repare but so far no luck. Anyone any ideas?

Rgds
Photo

Try SmartDefrag from Here

Take a bit of care. There are other things about to download, which are nothing at all to do with SmartDefrag.

At the site above: Click on the 'Download Now' button - the one with the funny green'white symbol and where it says 'Tested spyware free'.
Note: Do not click on the green 'Download Here' button on the same page in the advert below, where it says 'Recommended Download'.

The best defragmenter is Diskeeper which is a beefed up version of the one supplied with Windows. You do have to pay for it but it's woth it and they do a 30 day trial. If you want a free one, then PortableApps.com have one that also has the advantage of not needing to be installed (however, I haven't used it yet).

More important, is why your defrag failed. If it is just a random error then you should be able to re-run it. The most common reason for files not to be defragmented is lack of free space and/or a fault on the disk. If you think the latter is possible then back up all of your data and run Chkdsk.

If you have plenty of free disk space and no faults, then consider which files still need to be defragmented. If they are rarely used files with only a couple of fragments/ file then it does not matter. If the page file is fragmented, then this needs to be defragmented, most programs will not do this though the better versions of Diskeeper will and there are workarounds for other programs.

I have been using Smartdefrag. I sometimes find that there are files that are still fragmented. If I run it again straight away then this usually solves it or at the least there are much fewer files still fragmented.

I have had to run it three times to get 0% defragmented. It may well be a lack of a contiguous space big enough for the file to be defragmented.

The space free may be quite large before the first attempt, but it can be in so many small pieces as to be difficult to use by the defrag process on the first attempt and will only be usable when it is itself one large area.

I have just developed a fault with the Login for BTYahoo. When trying the Login programme it will just sit for several minutes with the Task Manager saying "not responding" but will eventually get me in. On Log out the same thing happens i.e. appears to hang but eventually Logs Out.

Thought at first it was AVG and then Yahoo servers but immediately switching off computer and restarting seems to solve the problem which leaves me with a fault in the Login/Logout programme???? which has come from where? and how do I fix it?.

any ideas anybody?

Thanks for all the help and advice, I'll give it a go this w/e.

Photo.

I'm going to have to replace my existing hard disk which is a Maxtor 6Y080L0. Not being terribly clever when it comes to hardware, I'm finding it difficult to work out exactly what kind of a replacement I should look for. I'll probably need an ATA-133 type drive. Can anyone recommend a specific replacement drive please?

EDIT: I notice there aren't too many of these drives available...ATA-133 is getting long on the tooth, I guess.

There are still some ATA-133 drives around, but it may be cheaper to buy an IDE to SATA adaptor.

Optimist, thanks for that.

I have tracked down a Western Digital 160 Gig ATA drive. Western Digital
This is what I intend doing: Using Acronis Trueimage Personal, create a complete image and restore it on the new disk. Can it be as simple as that? I'm a bit confused about imaging and cloning - are they the same thing? I want to avoid installing Windows XP on the new disk and am hoping restoring the image/clone would do the job. Any advice gratefully accepted.

klal

I haven't used True image but I assume that it can do this. I suspect that there is an option to transfer the entire disk directly to the new drive and resize the partition at the same time. A common reason to change hard disks is because they are full up, in which case, it is not practical to make a copy of the image first.

If by any chance Trueimage does not do the job then Paragon Partition Manager 8 - which is availible free if you look around - will definitely work.

Once you have transfered the disk, put the old one in a safe place as a backup.

Thanks Optimist. Luckily, I had invested in an external 160 GB USB drive for backups. I intend creating the image on that drive rather than the existing internal drive. My version of TrueImage is the freebie version(!) which came with some magazine. Just hoping it will be good enough for the job. Hope to schedule this for next weekend. As for the existing hard disk, I'll probably format it and let it remain in the bay as an additional drive after installing the new drive.

klal

ThePublisher was using Acronis True Image above, if you want to check out what he has posted.

I have it on my machine but thus far, I haven't used it.

Be careful! Disk letters in standalone AcronisTrueImage might sometimes differ from the way Windows identifies drives. For example, the D: drive identified in the standalone AcronisTrueImage might correspond to the E: drive in Windows.

I found a 94 page PDF file 'User's Guide' for Acronis True Image 10.0 at

http://eqca.download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage10.0_ug.en.pdf

It could be helpful.

Execline, thanks. Yes, that thing about about the drive letters caught my attention straightaway. No doubt, will have to be very careful. Will check out TP's experience re. Acronis. In any case, it does look like I'm going to have to upgrade my version of TrueImage as the cloning facility is absent in the freebie version. Will set me back by about $20 - hardly worth complaining about! :-)

Hi,

I'm using Acronis Home Version 11.

I don't do anything sophisticated. I do a backup and then one differential and then a new full backup.

I'd done a full backup from a Vista PC to a USB external drive.

In trying to move the internal drive of the PC to a drive caddy it got corrupted beyond recovery. We fitted a newly formatted internal of the same size and booted the PC with the CD that comes with Acronis. After a couple of false starts the PC recognised the USB drive and I was able to totally restore the internal drive.

It did take eleven hours, but those were eleven hours over night - so none of my time wasted.

TP

maddoctor.

I had something similar with BT Yahoo hanging & not responding a while ago. I deleted the Yahoo browser & re-installed. All been OK since.

...........well apart from now, when I've just installed Fix It Utilities 9 & every soddin' things seems slow :-(.

Bolshi , thanks for responding , was trying to avoid that.

did you just remove the applications? and was that separate on the hub installation disk.

Thanks, TP. Helps to know Acronis is reliable....

Woke up this morning, put the main turned the PC on, got an error Boot.ini / HAL.DLL missing or corrupt tried to start windows in safe mode but again same error.
Tried to start in Dos command mode, but the same error again
So tried to use XP CD to repair bad files etc but it wanted to start to install all over again and I didnt want to do that ;-(

So went to my other PC which by some fluke, worked on the Internet even thou the main one wasnt connected only switched on laughing at me ;-)

Read a few pages that suggested repair the Boot.ini cudnt find it anywhere on the harddrive even thou the net says its in the Root directory Yeah Right

Then read install XP in another directory and that will start windows xp, great that worked, but lost everything else boo hoo

Now have 2 XPs installed but still no Boot.ini file tried to copy the boot.ini backup file to root directory and chage name to boot.ini its wudnt because files already there, where I still cant see the ***** ******* *

Finaly had a brainwave, using system control settings and change the boot directory to my old XP directory, and we have it back up and running.

First I need to find out if I cant boot.ini or Hal.dll how to I drag n drop from dos, is there software I can put on a cd or usb that will make it a lot easier to do this next time

Where has my Boot.ini gone and how do I find/fix it or alter it to use any windows installed

Anyother bits of software I should get incase this happens again to but on a CD or USB stick??

Your Boot.ini file controls which copy of XP is loaded. It is located in the root directory and will be a hidden file. The easiest way to edit it is through the system applet in control panel which I assume is what you did. There is an option to manually configure the boot options. If you click that button, Boot.ini opens in notepad.

If you intend to keep both systems on your machine then make sure that you have a line in Boot.ini for each of them. Then you can select at boot time.

Your real problem, is why Boot.ini was corrupted. It could be a one off or it could be a virus or early signs of disk failiure.

If you want to access your disk without booting into windows, you can do this with the Windows setup CD but it is easier to use a Live Linux CD. Be careful though because some versions of Linux can't handle the NTFS file system as well as they would like you to believe.

Maddoctor.
What disk?
I deleted the BTyahoo browser only from Add/Remove in Windows & then went to the BTyahoo download centre & downloaded from there. It was quite painless :-)