Malfunctioning Defragmenter in Win xp pro

I am running xp pro on a dell inspiron 5150 notebook with 3.06ghz p4, 1gb ram 60gb hard drive. I was having all sorts of trouble with this machine a few months ago, but finally discovered one of my ram chips was bad. after installing new chipset and reformatting hd this machine has been running better than new, lightning fast, that is up until about 2 weeks ago I opened the defrag utility and to my surprise I was sitting and watching that hourglass for a long time before it opened up. (it usually opens and is ready to go in less than 1 second) I closed and tried again but it still opens very slow and then the buttons are nonresponsive, for a long time. Then, if you ever get the buttons to respond to the cursor the hourglass starts again. Then when I give up waiting and try to close it out it crashes. I sent error report to windows several times but never got any answer. I've never found their responses to be very helpful anyway, usually way off topic. Anyone know what's causing this? I defragment very often. Thanks.

 

Could be a bad installation ox XP. There are other defrag utilities about though so don't panic.

You could try Diskeeper from http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp

 

How about closer to home?

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1207

 

Have you disabled any of the Windows services? The XP defrag utility is actually a version of Diskeeper, and on my Win 2K pc anyway, Diskeeper doesn't work if the Event Log service is disabled. Not sure why that would be but that was my problem.

 

I don't know that I have or have not disabled the "event log service" as I'm not sure what that is or how to go about it. How do I check to see and turn it back on/ off ?
Is there such a thing as keeping the HD too clean? I have a habit of always deleting everything with bc wipe and I also use tweak regedit. I also usually defrag every time I add or delete files which can sometimes be almost daily. I use spybot search & destroy and ad aware after every internet session. I like to keep the garbage cleaned out so the machine stays fast. could I have erased part of the defrag utility?
Also I'm wondering, if I do install the disckeeper utility, will it act as a patch for the windows version, be a stand alone utility, or will it conflict with the windows version? Thanks.

 

The standard XP defrag is a cut-down version of DisKeeper.

If you install DisKeeper, it will be the default system defrag tool and not the XP one.

Not a big deal really if that's how you want to go, however, the standard XP one should work.

You can try System File Checker. Go to Start, run and type in sfc /scannow (note there is a space after sfc ) then click OK. You will need your Windows CD.

I suggest you also go to Add/Remove and uninstall any unused programs, then carry out a CHKDSK.

Right-click your hard drive, then Properties, then the "tools" tab.

Under Error-checking click "check now", then check both boxes "Automatically fix file stem errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors", then Start.

It will ask you if you want to schedule it for the next restart, so select yes.

There are also utilities made by hard driver manufacturers, most available here in the downloads section, which will check your drive for any defects.

 

Hello, again. I tried the CHKDSK thing and the system file checker using windows CD, but neither scan turned up anything.
So, I downloaded a copy of Diskkeeper and installed it. When I tried to open it acted the same as the old windows defrag utility. First it was very slow opening only partially, then the following error message popped up:

Unable to launch or connect to the diskeeper service. Possible causes are that another diskeeper process is currently connected to this computer or Diskeeper is not installed correctly. 0001

When I clicked the OK on error message the whole thing closed out. I tried it again with same results, only this time I clicked on area of diskeeper and the error message popped under. When the error message popped under the program opened up and I was able to defrag. Diskkeeper seems to do a more thorough and detailed job of defragmenting and does it faster, but why is it acting just like the old version with slow opening & error message?

I also checked the windows version afterwards and see that now the new diskkeeper utilty is what opens when you click the windows defrag ut. Both still act the same as before, slow and malfunctioning.

Any ideas? Can I reinstall windows without reformatting? Would that do any good? Thanks for your response.