----- Original Message -----
From: Jerry Fogelman
Subject: [PCSOFT] Defrag & Scan Disk stalled


I am running Windows 98 2nd edition on a 400mhz athlon w/64mg RAM. When I
now try to defrag, it starts, gets to 5% then restarts. Get message "Drive
contents changed, restarting". Scan disk does  a similar thing, continues
to restart. I was able to run scan disc in dos. I have reinstalled Win 98
with no success. Any help will be appreciated.

Jerry
-----

Jerry,

Usually this means something is running in the background. Although you're using Win98, the
following may still apply. I use Win95, and used to have the same problems with defrag and scandisk.
How I solved it is radical, and kind of a pain, but it works. First, I allowed pcpitstop to scan my
hard drive and, among other useful info, it gave me a list of everything that was running on my
system - even things that msconfig does not show. As it turned out, there were two files in
c:\windows\system that caused the errors with defrag & scandisk. The files are (Pstores.exe) and
(Tapiexe.exe)<= (yes it's TapiEXE.exe).

Now here's the radical part - whenever I run either defrag or scandisk, I cut those two files from
windows\system, and paste them on my desktop. Then both defrag and scandisk run fine. Afterwards, I
cut and paste the two files back into windows\system, and everything runs fine. If you try this,
it's pretty important that you remember to return the files to windows\system, or you will run into
other problems. You can get to pcpitstop here: http://www.pcpitstop.com/
Good luck, and I hope this helps.

Alan Thompson
----------------

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