vista not able to run defrag

[merlin]

a friend of mine running vista, cannot run defrag, it says ,"windows needs your permission to continue, yes or cancel, when he selects yes, it just sits there doing nothing.

he gets the "window needs etc " notice with other programs too, but when he selects yes they work ok,

anyone got any suggestions (other than get rid of B***** vista)

[Rik]

Sorry, Bob, no idea at all.

[Glenn]

Generally to defrag a drive under windows you need to have admin rights, is your friend an admin on the PC?

[Lance]

I guess so because rather than ask whether or not to continue, it would ask for the admin's password.

Does defrag open at all? Or does it just hang once defrag has opened?

[merlin]

yes he's the only one on it, so he has admin rights

[merlin]

it hangs before it opens,lance

[Lance]

A couple of things then...

First off, check that the Task scheduler service is running (Start | type "services" and select it | scroll to Task Scheduler | Check the status is "Started")

If that is, then can he run a command line defrag? (Start | All programs | Accessories | right click "Command Prompt" | select "Run as Administrator" | type "defrag c:"). If that doesn't work we will have to dig deeper!

[MoHux]

Merlin, is he sure it has 'hung', or is it just taking a very long time to authorise?
I seem to remember this happening to me once, when I was running as 'Admin'.  So I created a 'Standard User' account
and now use that.  It does mean you have to select between Admin or User on boot-up, but I have had no problems since.

If he looks in 'Help and Support', and puts 'users' in the search-box, it comes up with quite a bit of information on the subject.

Mo

[Simon]

Would it help to turn off UAC for the purpose of the defrag, perhaps?  Also, why does he feel he needs to defrag?  I thought that necessity had dwindled with XP.

[Lance]

Vista does, by default, have a regular scheduled defrag. I think it is weekly but I'm not sure. If this is left as is there shouldn't be a need to kick it off manually.

[merlin]

he needs to defrag now ,as he's just installed ccleaner for the first time ,and its come up with 1 gb of cr*p , yeah i know 1gb
so that will have left many empty spaces that need compacting

even without the defrag the computer speed (a lappy) has increased dramatically

[Lance]

Has he tried using the command line method I suggested above?

[madasahatter]

Have a look at this third party defrag tool merlin - one of the guys at work uses it, and he says it's much better and much faster than the windows one anyway

[merlin]

thanks everyone so many helpful suggestions,but i wo'nt be seeing him tonight, will let you know how we get on later

[Sebby]

He could try right-clicking on defrag and choosing run as administrator. Failing that, there are much better third-party alternatives out there.

[drummer]

Diskeeper Lite is a fully functional version of the pro version without all the bells and whistles of scheduled defrags etc.  Best defragger I've used so far, even though this version is quite old.

Contig from Sysinternals is also pretty good and becomes very user-friendly when used with a GUI.  I like Contig because it lets you defrag individual files and folders if that's what you want, rather than an entire drive/partition.

[merlin]

finaly caught up with him ,it seems he was too impatient, had to wait 30 seconds for it to start defragging !!!

all ok now thanks for all your advice

[Sebby]

We're all guilty of being impatient.

[madasahatter]

finaly caught up with him ,it seems he was too impatient, had to wait 30 seconds for it to start defragging !!!

SUS huh? (stupid user syndrome) 

[Glenn]

I prefer PICNIC

Problem In Chair Not In Computer

[Rik]

Nice one.

[madasahatter]

I prefer PICNIC

Problem In Chair Not In Computer

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