I am going to be away from home for six weeks and wanted to check whether I should turn off my computer and broadband modem while away, or leave them in standby mode?
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I have been unable to defragment the C drive on my computer. When attempting the defragmentation procedure, the error DEFRAG004 appears. This same error also occurs when running Disk Defragmenter in Safe Mode. The computer is running Windows 98. (more…)

Following the execution of Disk Defragmenter (which I repeated three times in a row) the fragmentation graphic display shows red segments (i.e. fragmented files). However, the defragmentation report states there are no remaining fragmented files. This seems inconsistent. Also, Disk Cleanup takes forever to complete the ‘Scanning: Compress old files’ stage. Meanwhile, the CPU is working at full steam. How can I resolve these issues? The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

Each week I conduct regular system maintenance, part of which is Disk Defragmenter and Disk Checker. However, I have recently had trouble running Disk Checker when ticking both options: ‘Automatically fix file system errors’ and ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors’. When the computer restarts to carry out these tests a message appears during bootup saying: ‘Cannot open the volume for direct access. Finished checking the disk’. Thinking to run the test in Safe Mode, I reboot again and then press F8 and select ‘Safe Mode’ from the startup menu. During the Safe Mode startup a list of drivers appear on screen, but the boot freezes about half way through. This leaves no option except switching the computer off and restarting. How can I get the Disk Checker to work? The computer is Windows XP Professional SP2. (more…)

When running Scan Disk in a Thorough mode, the scan always stops at 79745 out of 1054200 clusters. Why won’t the scan complete its task? The computer is running Windows 98. (more…)