On Wednesday 20 February 2002 04:19 pm, you wrote:
> OK, thanks for the advice. I made the mistake of leaving my screen saver
> and power management stuff on the first time I tried to defrag. I did turn
> them off the second time. There is bunch of programs in the (sys tray?) in
> the bottom right screen (this is Win 98 BTW). Do these count as running
> programs? I think what I'll do in the future is run it in Safe Mode. And
> I'll try and do regularly because I always forget and leave it for ages!
>
> Alex Onslow

Alex:
Yes, the programs in the sys tray should be shut down; they may be the worst
offenders. EndItAll or other programs will take care of this if the
ctl-alt-delete gets too tedious. As I noted in an earlier post, I've never
tried the Safe Mode method.
Postponing defragging is not the greatest sin in the computing world -- the
only real penalty is a gradual performance hit. However, if you do it
frequently, then the filesystem doesn't get as disorganized, thus giving the
defrag less to do, so it does its job more quickly. If you want to get some
idea as to what's going on, activate the Show Details option during a defrag,
and you'll see that there is a lot of activity. Caveat: If you scroll up and
down, you will slow the process, but charge it up to a learning experience.
(Now if I could only apply the same discipline to my desk....)
Regards,
Carroll Grigsby

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