Anyone had this problem before???

I use to have a similar problem with my old PC. I found out the thing that was freezing the defrag process was some of my running programs. I had to close all my runing programs before running defrag.

Haven't had that problem da_zman20. Interesting.Did it work before you updated XP? If so try and restore to a point before the update. Thats all I can think of.

I lost a day and a half of productive time last weekend because of defrag anxiety. I was working on a project on my notebook (44Gig drive) and something was making it run verrry slow, so I checked it with SpeedDisk. It said the drive was 37% fragmented so I ran SD to defrag it. It ran all night and in the morning was only about 50% done and seemed to be locked up. I rebooted and re-analyzed and found that now the drive was 86% fragmented (!!). This time I ran the built-in MS defragger and it ran for about ten hours to complete the job. When it was finished and I re-analyzed it said the drive is now 37% fragmented.

I think it was a memory leak in CorelDraw11 that was slowing me down but now, like da_zman20, I find myself wondering what's up with defragging XP...

If defrag is freezing it probably means there's an error on the drive. Run Check Disk first with the 'Automatically fix errors' and 'Scan for and attempt to recover bad sectors' checked.

hmmm... I will do that, I will try Check Disk, but this is getting to me... been rebooting all day > and the last update I did was a while ago... if I restore back that far, i will lose alot of settings that have changed since then... hmmmm

chkdsk didn't work... errr tried to use and the computer said it had to restart to do it... then it started and lasted 3 seconds and said everything was good... boy do I miss scandisk... errr... disabled all background programs, including those from Stardock... still can't find any reason why it wouldn't work...

IMO it's time to re-install windows. Unless it is too much of a problem for you to do this is the best fix.

I always run MS defrag with "fix errors" after I run Scan Disc.

Someone gave me a computer once because they said it begun running to slowly. I had to run scan disc 28 times before I could run Defrag once. It took almost a week to get the drive back in shape, but then the drive collapsed a month later. Must have worked itself to death before I defragged it.

I would reinstall windows, but I lost my CD that really bugs me... grrr... how dumb I am...

maybe I will call Microsoft see how much they will charge me for another one since I already have a license... hmmmm

da_zman20 - if you registered the software believe it or not MS will replace it

Check Disk with the options ticked should have five steps before it finishes and should take ten minutes not a few seconds!

Just curious... those with Defrag problems what file system you on?

I've never been keen on MS stuff, Norton Disk Doctor always seemed to fix things, and always prefered Speed Disk.

I find it very helpful to start up the computer in Safe Mode before running Defrag. That way, no programs are running in the background.

I ran Check disk again... and something must be wrong with it, I made sure the checked for boxes were the options... and i am running NTFS... I notice that my system actually ran better when I first got XP and I was running Fat32... As for getting a new CD, I found the info on their website, but the 800 number was like Monday through Friday (today is sunday) and the hours 8 to 5 or something... so... Im gonna call tomorrow and Just reinstall Windows... I can go a week or two without defraging...