My laptop computer will not hibernate, but instead the following message appears “Insufficient resources exist to complete the API”. What does this mean and how can I correct the matter? A second (unrelated) problem is after defragmenting the laptop a message appears warning ?MFT usage is currently 93% of total MFT size, which indicates it is likely the MFT will become defragmented. It is recommended you expand the MFT in Volume C. Use the Configure MFT / Paging File option in the Change Your Settings menu to configure the MFT in this volume to a larger size?. I have no idea what this message means, or the implications of the warning. How can I resolve these two problems? The computer is running Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 with 2 GB RAM and Office 2007.

The error you experience when attempting to put the computer into hibernation is a known issue when running Windows XP SP2, and relates to the Windows system being unable to allocate necessary memory resources to hibernate the computer. Microsoft has commented that this is most common when a computer has more than 1 GB of RAM. While this may sound like a complicated explanation, you will be glad to know that Microsoft has published a fix for this problem on the Microsoft Knowledge Base website: support.microsoft.com/kb/909095 . Download and install this update on your computer, and the problem should be resolved.

The message which you receive after defragmenting your computer, about the MFT size, is more complex to diagnose and fix. I assume that you are using Diskeeper to defragment your hard drive, as this message is specific to the Diskeeper software and does not appear with the normal Windows Disk Defragmenter software. The MFT is the Master File Table, and is a key component of the NTFS file system which is used by Windows XP. The MFT contains information about all the files and folders stored on your hard drive (such as the location, size, and relevant file permissions). This information is essential to allow Windows to locate files and folders on the drive, and determine the attributes of these files and folders. Each time a new file or folder is created or added to the hard drive (NTFS volume) a new entry in the MFT is created for that data with the relevant attributes assigned to that data.

When the NTFS volume is initially setup on a computer, Windows reserves a segment of the hard drive for the MFT. This is done so that the MFT data always occupies a contiguous segment of the hard drive, to prevent the MFT data from becoming fragmented across the hard drive (which would degrade performance when reading data from the hard drive). This is even more important because the MFT cannot be defragmented unlike other data on the hard drive, so keeping the MFT data contiguous is very important for hard drive read performance.

As we have discussed, Windows assigns a segment of the hard drive for the MFT when the NTFS volume is initially setup. However, if the storage required for the MFT exceeds the allocated amount then Windows will allocate more storage, but this will be in another location on the hard drive. As such, this storage will not be contiguous with the main MFT data stored on the hard drive, resulting in the MFT data becoming fragmented and degrading read performance from the hard drive.

While I have not used Diskeeper before, from reading experiences of other users who also have this same problem it seems that Diskeeper does give you the option to resize the MFT after this warning message appears. However, I would be hesitant to change the MFT size. This is an essential component of the NTFS volume, and if things go bad with the resize you are likely to lose all data on the hard drive. In any case, it is unlikely that you will notice much of a performance decrease unless you are an absolute power user and are doing a lot of read and write operations to the hard drive, which is unlikely since you appear to be using your computer mostly for home usage. Therefore, I would leave sleeping dogs alone and ignore this warning for the time being, and see how the computer performance goes in the future. If you do start to notice a sizable performance hit, and wish to attempt the resize of the MFT, then you must backup all your essential data before attempting this procedure, just in case things go bad and you need to restore the hard drive data from a backup. That said, if you do get to this stage I would suggest that perhaps a better alternative would be to backup all the data you wish to keep, reformat the hard drive, and do a fresh installation of Windows. This will clear out the MFT which may be clogged with defunct files which have accumulated on your computer over the years, and could save you the trouble of messing around with resizing the MFT.

As a side note, we should consider why the MFT has filled-up. This is a relatively rare occurrence, and generally indicates that you have many files and folders on the computer. As such, this may be indicative of a virus or other piece of malware which has been installed onto your computer and is creating many small files. Therefore, I would recommend you complete a full virus scan of your computer (with the latest virus definition files) to ensure the computer is clean, and also download then scan your computer with Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com/downloads), Ad-Aware SE Personal (www.lavasoft.de), and Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org) to ensure that no viruses or malware are present on your computer.