DEFRAGGER BACK! THANKS for all the HELPFUL stuff, team!

Never really used anything in Works, but Word XP came installed on my XP Home machine IN Works, so I never got rid of it since I need Word daily. Bought Office 2003, and set out to install it today. Removed Word, then Works, to get a clean new installation of Office. Cleaned out the reg.

After test rebootings and checkings, went to defrag the drive before inning O2003, and nothing happens when I call defrag from any of the possible Windows switches/methods.

Mebbe I lost my defragger executable somehow in the cleanout, but I don't remember what it's called in XP. I have defrag.exe in my Windows folder, but that looks like the command-prompt version. Double-clicking it gives a fast flash of a command-prompt window and nothing else.

Suggestions for getting my defragger back up and running before I install this new suite? I'll really appreciate ideas. I don't think I've encountered a missing defragger before ... ever.

 

Can you do it from Computer Management?

 

Nope. Tried all avenues to it. Nothing happens at all when I click the Defrag button for any of my four drives. No response. That's what I'd expect if the file is missing. No error message; no rights question; just nothing happens.

You think sfc /scannow with my orig XP CD handy?

 

Nothing when I click Analyze, either.

 

Haven't tried that yet, but can. Seems to me, though, that I wouldn't be using Firefox to talk with you on the machine, getting successful reboots, and seeing nothing wrong with anything ELSE, if my reg were corrupted.

RegSupreme DID find a HUGE number of "useless" entries, but that stands to reason when I'd just ripped out two massive sets of files. I didn't worry about fixing 1300 "useless" things, then using NTRegOpt to "optimize" (and that program has always reported any problem area in the reg before, and asked for permission to skip it and optimize the rest).

 

Hey WW,

This is a strange one, and I have an equally strange response. I found a MSKB article on uninstalling Defrag, but... it's in German! Maybe I'm having a brain fart, but I can't seem to find an English equivalent

I obviously can't read the text, but it looks like the info about .exe's, .dll's and registry keys is all there. I know you don't want to uninstall, but maybe you can reverse the process. This might help you solve the puzzle.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Bde%3BD43422

 

not a solution but may be related

This is not a fix but it may be related somehow: *whenever* I run a registry cleaner it kills my ability to run Executive Software's Diskeeper. -Oddly enough I've yet to see if it messes up Windows built in defragger -I just reinstall Diskeeper.
-522.

 

alan & fiver:
Checking files listed in the German thing, and wondering whether the fact that Diskeeper is screwed by a reg cleaner means I need to do an sfc.

Keep 'er coming, guys!

 

I checked Windows\System32, and found dfrgfat.exe and the other defrag files there. Tried dfrgfat.exe, and got a popup that it's not runnable from the command line (I knew that; just wanted to see what happened), then tried the adjacent dfrg.msc in the list, and immediately got the mangmnt console window open to Defrag, but neither the Defrag button nor the Analyze button does anything except appear to be pushed when I clcik on it.

 

Hi Wizewiz
Strange problem you got there, just to ask the stock question does it work in safe mode
Are there any errors coming up in your event viewer

Just clutching at straws here but you never know

 

You bet! Ya never know!

I asked for help here because when it's your own machine, sometimes you don't think of all the things you do when it's somebuddy else's.

Anyhoo, Safe Mode no diff. No response from the buttons. It's as thought the reg no longer knows where to send the requests for action when the buttons are pushed.
Nothing in the event viewers for system or apps. Security is irrelevant, but shows nothing anyway.

I ran sfc /scannow, it asked for the CD, and after it finished, I ran the post-SP1 updates rollup immediately. It couldn't have found much to do, because it didn't even ask for a reboot.

I have an image I can go back to, but it has the mass of files from Word and Works still in it (as well as the old registry).

I suppose the plan shd be this: try restoring the registry from RegSupreme. If that works, go from there to clean out the mess.

If that doesn't do the trick, restore from the image, then start the removal again, and this time take the registry cleaning in steps, a hundred at a time or so, checking Defrag after every hundred.

Corroboration, support, or *alternatives* WELCOMED!

It's my very own main baby, and I hate to have it not in perfect shape.

 

Wiz, it that image is current enough to be useful, I'd restore that, then uninstall Works, but not run the reg cleaner, and see if you're OK. I suspect it's the reg cleaner that nuked defrag & chkdisk.

I've used reg cleaners in the past that have messed up a few programs. It's sure not unheard of, although I've never heard of it messing up Windows defrag.

Then if you want, run that reg cleaner carefully, paying attention to what it's actually getting rid of.

 

Yeah sorry i cant offer anything else, be interested to find out if restoring from reg supreme helps
1300 entries its gonna be a pain sorting through that lot if it is indeed the problem

 

GT,

You don't think I shd try restoring the reg from the Reg Cleaner backups first?

(The image is from just before I started removing Word and Works this aft, so it's absolutely current up to the first use of Add-Remove progs. It's insurance, but you never want to scrap an entire drive and run a restore-overwrite from an image unless you've tried everything else first. I think. I guess. Oh my.)

 

If it was me i would definitely try restoring first, if only to see if that solves the problem
Cant see it would do any harm as you've got your insurance handy anyway

Just my 02

 

I can honestly say that in the 2+ years I've been fixing XP problems, I have never seen this....


You pick the tough ones, thats for sure, Wiz

 

Negatory. Nothing so major would be available via add/remove components.


Not even if you edit sysoc.inf.

 

Weell, team, with your support, I got 'er. The backups of the best reg cleaners are so good that they actually work, and this was a case in point. Since I didn't want to wade thru the 1300 tiny fixes and removals jv16's RegCleaner Tool had made, I just restored the things it had FIXED first, and that did it. I had the defragger and analyzer back even without rebooting.

Now I knew I had a lot of garbage left in the reg, though, after removal of those two massive tools, so I did this (Putting this here JIC somebody's reading this who needs to see the work-through details):

Ran the old MS RegClean 4.1a again. Still works just fine on XP, but it only targets (as it always did) MS stuff. Since my removals were all MS stuff, it found 11 kb of fixes and made them (it doesn't count them, just gives you a text file with a .reg extension, but this was the largest I'd ever seen: 11 KB of Notepad is a lot of junk!)

Ran the old RegScrubXP, the king of the cleaners before RegSupreme came along, IMO, and it found 370 faults. Fixed all of those and still had everything fine.

Went back to my RegSupreme (not the Reg Tool in jv16) that has the Normal, Deep, and Extra Deep settings, and ran the Normal and cleared another 15 faults.

Optimized the reg again, then defragged the drives (C, where Program Files MS Works was and D, where MS Office was) and saw some major action.

Then I used the SysInternals SysFile Defragger, and it found the newly compacted reg in some splinters, so I set it to run next boot and rebooted.

I now have a working, compacted, defragged reg, a working defragger, and defragged drives with major program suites removed. I'll work my way through the Reg Tool's findings another day and see whether I can find the little bugger that fouled me up.
********
robo: I should have thought of the inf-install. Thanks very much for that reminder. I think it's THE answer, so if I ever see this again, that's the FIRST thing I'll try!
Adrynalyne: I hadn't ever seen it either. And if they weren't tough, I'd fix 'em quietly myself and you wouldn't hear me sobbing about 'em. You guys are the best, so when I NEED help with the toughies, I know where to go.
Nick: A GREAT resource I had never seen. I'll use it for clients who need it in the future. Many thanks.
DV8: Good thinking, but Adryn's right: MS wouldn't make anything that critical that easy. I appreciate your making me think about it though.
The rest of you: Thanks for reading and writing. Every idea helped me work it through. This forum makes all the difference.

G'night to you all. A happy holiday weekend to one and all.

 

xflat called it "... the weird category ..."

I'll second that one. Like Adrynalyne, I've been around the computing-solutions block several times (since I launched, registered, licensed, and started paying taxes for "Computing Solutions Unlimited, Ltd.", half a dozen years ago), and I had NEVER seen a defragger function-analyzer function disappear before.

BUT, ... I DID get up today and re-run the jv16PT Reg Cleaner Tool and check the results (about 1000 faults, still, probably almost all from the removal of Works and Word) line-by-line, and found four entries that referrred to dfrgfat.exe and dfrg.msc, so those got "Ignore"-d for the moment, and I dumped the rest, with the (expected) zero negative impact on programs and functions.

For the very, very, very most part, what that prog finds is TRULY dispensable, and dispensing with it will do no harm.

But I STILL recommend the RegSupreme/jv16PT reg cleaners ONLY to clients who are fairly advanced in their knowledge of the machines they run. If they don't know what the Windows Explorer IS on first mention ("the WHAT???"), or if they've never spent time working with data values in the registry ("Doesn't MS say to stay away from that?"), I send 'em to the lighter-duty utilities that do a lot less, but do only what's almost sure to be safe.