Defrag problems - "not enough memory"

[Marjo]

Hi,

Hope someone can help me. I have a problem I do not understand. Im trying to defrag my 20 G HDD but It wont work . the response is that their not enough memory available. I have tried to boot up with no apps running (only the basics - selective starup with all items unchecked at the general tab in msconfig) Still not enough memory available!

What kind of memory is the program asking for ?
Conventional memory or is it RAM (256 kb)
acording to mem the largest exec. prog possible to run is 600 k. Some time ago I tried to reinstall windows - the same answer not enough memory available.

Anyone - I need some hints what to do.

Thanks in advance
// Marie

 

[WMH]

Try this, reboot, ctrl-alt-del and end task on everything except explorer and systray. Make sure there are no screen savers running, no power down options, no idle time shutdown things running. Try to run scan disk to check for errors, then run defrag. If that doesn't work, I think you can run defrag from safe mode (been awhile since I have played with 95 or 98).

Hope this helps, WMH
MCP+I, MCSE

 

[cdogg]

A couple things for you to check:

1) What is the % of Free Resources right after a reboot? Go to "Control Panel -> System" and click the Performance tab to check. This percentage should be easily over 75% with 90% or higher preferred. If this percentage is low, then there are still processes/apps starting with Windows that are eating them up.

2) Like WMH said, try it from Safe Mode and make sure the screen saver and power management options are disabled.
~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[Marjo]

Hi WMH & cdogg,

Thanks for your help!
I tried to perform the scan disc and defrag in safe mode
but it didnt work.

But, I think I might have found the solution on microsofts support page:

http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q229154

"Cause: This issue can occur if you are running Windows on a hard disk that is larger than 8 gigabytes (GB) in size and has a cluster size less than 8 kilobytes (KB). This configuration may be created if you use a third-party disk tool to create a partition on a hard disk that is larger than 8 (GB) in size and has a cluster size less than 8 KB"

Whish me good luck!! I will have to resize my clusters to 16 KB.
// Marie

 

[PMestre]

Marjo,

could you see if the Virtual Memory is enough?

Right Mouse Botton on My computer, performance...

Tell me if it works.

PMestre
pedro.mestre@clix.pt

 

[benjamenus]

another option is to boot from floppy. i suggest you run scandisk first, then defrag

 

[Kento]

Marjo, yes you found the answer. You need to correct the cluster size to fix it. That's the only solution. If you don't know, you can use Partition Magic to do that otherwise I believe you'll need to format then reinstall windows.

 

[Marjo]

Hi everybody!

Virtual memory ok.

Last night I used the partition Magic 4.0 to resize the cluster size from 4 k to 16 K and now.....defrag works perfekt and so does scan disc, finally


//Marie