Defrag questions

[FrustratedPoet]

I plan to defrag my PC’s hard drive soon. I assume that it’s a good idea to shut down as many running processes as possible before doing so.

However, seeing as I’m totally clueless, I have no idea exactly what processes are required to make Windows keep running. Which processes must I leave on?

OS = XP Home

[CerberusIV]

I upgraded to XP home recently (after reformatting the hard drive). When I try to run defrag it just says that I don't need to do it yet.

If you are going to do it just pick a time when you can leave the computer to it for a while, start it running defrag and leave it alone.

I assume it is not networked. If you have a broadband connection you might want to ensure that is disabled, or at least not set to check for email periodically.

The last time I did a half full 40MB drive under Win98SE it took about two hours. You might find it worthwhile leaving it running overnight if your HDD is much larger than that.

Disclaimer: if you break it after reading my advice, I know nothing about computers

[Urban Ranger]

Disconnect from any and all networks. Disable all programs that run periodically by scheduling. Disable virus scanners.

[FrustratedPoet]

bump to get it off the second page

[Zopperoni]

Boot into safe mode, and run Defragmentation from there.

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Zopperoni
Boot into safe mode

How do I do that?
The only times I've been in safe mode is when the comp has crashed and it's done it automatically.

[Urban Ranger]

Press [F8] when the computer finishes doing POST.

[Kuciwalker]

Don't bother with safe mode.

ctrl-alt-delete everything except Explorer and Systray.

[Urban Ranger]

For XP Home?

[Kuciwalker]

Oh, sorry. I didn't see that

I have no idea what processes are important in XP (damnit, there are like 5000 from MS).

[Solver]

Well, you can generally go through the list and terminate them all. XP doesn't let you terminate the processes it needs, so whenever you get a "This is Critical Process and can't be terminated", go on for next one.

[Harry Seldon]

Get everything out of your system tray, too. I let mine run for hours only to find I had forgotten to disable seti@home. The first 10 MB of my drive looked great though.

[Kuciwalker]

It took hours to do 10 megs?

Mine takes an hour or two to do 60 gigs

[Immortal Wombat]

If you have something like seti@home running though, it has to restart every few minutes/seconds. Tends to slow the process somewhat.

[Harry Seldon]

Seti accesses the disk, changing the information and forcing defrag to start over.