Hello all
While defragging in safe mode on my win98se system the process started over at least five times at different percentage points.
It has always been my understanding that this happens in normal mode even with supposedly nothing running in the background because of disk writing.
But in safe mode why would defrag continually restart?
Thanks, Brindle

In Safe Mode > Run > Scan Disk first. Then > Defrag
And see if that helps.

Before I ran defrag I cleaned out my temp,cookies tif, emptied the recycle bin ran scandisk in safe mode then defraged.

Even in Safe Mode, this sometimes happens with the MS defrag program, especially if you have to defrag a large amount on your hard drive, or do not defrag on a regular basis.
Regards,
John

I defrag often, once a week, and use winme defrag.
It's a 40gig HD with 3.65 used.
I keep my HD clean even to wiping the recycle bin as oppose to emptying it.
programs are deleted using unwise.exe or add
emove if no uninstallshield is available. Then the registry is manually edited for lose ends, if you will.

I don't bother going into Safe Mode to defrag in 98 (a personal preference). Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Close Program box. End task on all running processes except for Explorer and Systray and your off to the races. Of course, you can't be connected to the internet when doing this.

Yep always done it that way myself. Plus turning off ZA & AVG. Never have had to unplug my cable to defrag if thats what you mean by "connected to the internet". If you mean online, shame on you. Guess you had to mention it. Today though it was an impossible task so went to safe mode.
Really what I want to know is why in safe mode would defrag keep restarting.

Something writing to the hard drive.

I guess I haven't made myself real clear. I know that in normal mode that this is caused by something writting to the HD but I thought in safe mode that was not possible. Is this wrong? Do I have a hidden app that could be writting to the HD in safe mode? If not my question is what could it be? A memory leak? What?

All safe mode does is load the bare neccessities to boot to Windows. It won't load video, modem, network card or printer drivers, things like that. But you can still have programs running in the background. Boot to safe mode and go to Start>Run and type in msinfo32. Click the + beside Software Environment and highlight Running Tasks. You'll see what processes are running. One of those may be writing to the drive.

Thank you, that is the information I needed. I wasn't very clear from the get go.