hdd not defragging...

[shiato storm]

just wondering if there's a way around the windows defragger to use something more 'powerful' as I've got a huge chunk of space the computer is telling me that I can't defrag for what ever reason - it lists the location but there is nothing there when I look. chkdsk comes up fine so not entirely sure whats going on tbh

[danjamin]

That's probably where your pagefile is kept... Which can't be defragged while you're using windows. [Unless you disable the pagefile, reboot, defrag, enable pagefile, reboot]

You can get a third party defrag program from the likes of norton/symantec, if I remember properly, I think there's one included with Norton Systemworks 2002 onwards, under the moniker or speed disk.

Possibly.

[Splash]

Failing that have you tried defragging in safe mode?

[shiato storm]

yes, I thought I moved my page file to another drive - I have 3 different physical drives. I'll go check when I get in from work...

[Hidden Hippo]

You could also try downloading the trial version of O&O defrag. It's basically the same as the Windows one, but much better and faster to defrag. I'm tempted to buy a full copy from Amazon insterad of the trial.

[redlight]

Diskeeper 2007 trial here

http://www.diskeepereurope.com/

[shiato storm]

right its coming up saying pagefile.sys is the problem, with 2gb!!
whats weird is pagefile is set to an entirely different drive altogether. any reason why it could have changed?

[excalibur2]

You can get a third party defrag program from the likes of norton/symantec, if I remember properly, I think there's one included with Norton Systemworks 2002 onwards, under the moniker or speed disk.

Possibly.

ermm I would advise to limit Symantec/norton stuff to something like Partition magic, as it plaster files all over your hard drive.

[shiato storm]

yes...norton/symantec is almost as bad as a virus it tries to remove!!

I think I sorted the problem. went into memory management, said to create a page file in C drive, got a message saying it was going to overwrite what ever's there - (erm, not that I said windows could put anything there in the first place!!) and then removed it again. restart and I've got 4GB back!! yes thats four whole gigabytes from nowhere!

now, should I be worried what's not there?!

ah, the vagrencies of windows...

[excalibur2]

Well I always use a fixed pagefile size, and I assume it stays in one place on the hard drive.

[shiato storm]

so do, rather did, I

[excalibur2]

so do, rather did, I

Interesting poll here..."what size is your fixed pagefile".

Mine's 800mb with 1gig of ram.....size not scientifically chosen but a guess of what my computer needs.

[danjamin]

Mine is apparently 1536MB, and I, likewise, have 1GB of RAM... But that's what Windows Server 2003 decided was appropriate for me, apparently...

And last time I argued with windows... Well, lets just say it didn't end well...

[Funkstar]

i have a 1014MB swap on its own partition, with 2gig ram. Originally this laptop had 512MB so the swap was roughly twice the size. can't be bothered to re-partition at the moment to change the swap. I don't think Windows needs it anyway.

[shiato storm]

I've got 2gb of ram and i tell windows how much page file to make...

[Captain Fizz]

Hmmm... I have something like a 2.5GB page file and 2GB of RAM.

When the page file was at 2GB it moaned at me once when editing a photo. >.<
So set it to system managed.

XP manages it's swap file well enough by itself.
The days of needing to set it to a specified size to prevent fragmentation etc of it are pretty much over.

2k etc - Still set it manually - But system managed does me a treat.
(And means it'll moan, then increase it if whatever I'm doing takes the wee at the time)


Anyway - O&O is one of the best defraggers I've used.
Speedisk is also good... Still prefer O&O's options and jobs.