System: Pentium 4 3.0GHz, Gigabyte GA-8S661FXM-775 motherboard, 1 GB DDR 400 RAM (32MB shared video), 80 GB hard drive, Windows XP SP3
Q: I can usually fix most computer problems I encounter, but this one has so far proved impossible to find an answer for. However, it’s probably something simple if you know what the problem is and what the solution is.
Recently the Windows Disk Defragmenter stopped working on NTFS volumes, however, it still works fine on FAT or FAT32 volumes. It doesn’t matter whether the volume is on the computer’s hard drive, or whether it is an external flash drive or hard drive. Defrag has something against NTFS volumes. There is nothing wrong with the NTFS volumes, as third-party defragmenters quite happily defrag them. The problem just occurred suddenly for no apparent reason. I regularly defrag, and one went to do it one day and I was greeted with Defrag not working. Any ideas on this one?
A: This is a more common problem than you might think and is usually caused by a background service that isn’t running. Go to Start, Run, type in services.msc and press Enter. Check that Logical disc manager and Logical disc manager administrative service are set to automatic. Also make sure that DCOM Server Process Launcher is set to automatic. Reboot the system and try the defrag again.
If that doesn’t work, or if those processes were already active, make sure the page file is turned on. To do this go to Control Panel, select System and click the Advanced tab. Now choose Settings under Performance and again select the Advanced tab. Under Virtual memory select Change and make sure that the Paging file size for the selected drive is set to System managed size.
Defrag not working may be down to some background services that aren’t running
Originally featured in PCU120
