System won't work in Scan Disk or Defrag

I Cleaned my computer with air and snapped it back together and now I cannot run scandisk or defrag hard drive.Everything else seems to run ok. I have checked device manger, it's ok.I have two hard drives. The other hard drive being a 10gb runs scandisk and defrag ok.I would make the 10gb hard drive the main one but I do not know how. Any suggestions?

Thank you .

This question was answered on November 10, 2001. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Thanks for your question You can force Windows to run ScanDisk and Defrag properly by systematically shutting down all running programs Here's how:

1 Click the taskbar button for each running program and close it, saving your data first Repeat until you see no taskbar buttons for running programs.

2 Open Control Panel, double-click the Display option, click the Screen Saver tab, and set your screen saver to None Close the Display dialog box.

3 Open Control Panel and look for a Find Fast icon If you never installed Microsoft Office, you can skip this step If you see this icon, double-click it, pull down the Index menu, and choose Pause Indexing Close Find Fast and close Control Panel.

4 Shut down any antivirus or security software and other system level utilities you have loaded You can usually do this by right clicking the antivirus programs icon in the lower right side of the taskbar and using the shortcut menu.

5 Press Ctrl Alt Del to pop up the Close Program list For every program listed except Explorer and Systray, select the program's name from the list and click the End Task button Repeat until the only entries left are Explorer and Systray Click Cancel to get rid of the Close Program dialog box.

Now run ScanDisk and then follow up by using the Defrag utility It may take you a while to get through the 10% mark when defragmenting your drive; don't worry, this is perfectly normal This time you should have no problems finishing the job Afterwards remember to restore your screen saver and antivirus program to normal operation; reboot to complete the process.

If this techique doesn't work, as a last resort you can restart your computer in Safe Mode and run both utilities Immediately after restarting, watch for the text message Starting Windows When you see this message, press F8 to display the Windows startup menu Choose the Safe Mode option and wait for your computer to finish booting Both disk utilities should run fine from the Safe Mode.

As far as making your new disk the main disk You need to set the jumpers on the disk, the old one to slave and the new to master.

Good luck and have fun.

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Posted by Jeffrey of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on November 10, 2001

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