Defragging

[ReaperFett]

Little hand needed :)

First off, in simple terms, what does it do?

Second, what do I gain?

Third, is there a risk I could lose data?




Oh, something I heard. Man in the balkans was just found in the mountains. He could barely speak ow, but explained he has been hiding in the mountains while the Balkan(think thats right) war went on, living off berries, the only regular visitor was a bear who used to scratch nearby. Shows how well he hid himself. The war ended six years ago :)

[Marcus Telcontar]

1) It's like reordering your bookshelf - placing volume 1 thru to Volume 22 of Reaperfett's black book in the one place and in order for faster searching and data retrival.

2) Speed.

3) Minimal

[Loki Ahmrah]

How long does it take usually? As I've left mine alone for about 4 hours and it hadn't even done 1% - I thought "Sod that!" and cancelled.

[TheHolo.Net]

Defrag doesn't usually work real well on a Windows 98 machine. It typically has to restart itself whenver changes of any kind are made to the hard drive. If you have any resident programs running in your status area (by your clock) they will write and use information in your virtual memory file (on your hard drive) and cause the defrag tool to continually start over.

It is best to end as many resident (active) programs as possible when running defrag. It shouldn't really take all that long on a system of around 20 Gigabytes or so if it doesn't have to keep starting over.

[HaeLari Draevyn]

It depends on if you have other windows open or any programs open. Or at least thats what I found. You have to close everything that you're doing and it'll go faster. I had the defrag window open all day while posting and it didn't work. Never even got to 1%! So, I shut off everything, including my AIM, and it worked... Also, it might help if you restart the computer before doing it too. Don't know why though.O_o

[Alec Lafeyette]

I close everything down, close down everything in the corner by the clock, turn the screen off, and go do something for a long time. Yet it still manages to restart itself over and over until I give up.

[HaeLari Draevyn]

I guess it depends on what kind of piece-o-crap machine you have. :lol

[TheHolo.Net]

Then there is probably a program that you can't see running somewhere. You can see all the actively running programs on a Win 95/98 PC by pressing CTRL - ALT - DEL once. There are usually only three programs in that window that you actully have to keep active. The most important being "explorer", because that is in fact the operating system itself, "systray", and the last is "taskbar". All the others are normally third party programs that aren't required for your system to run.

[Marcus Telcontar]

Which is one more reason I hate Windows 98. I burn every copy of that foul, foul program I ever find.

[ReaperFett]

stay away from my house then :)

[HaeLari Draevyn]

98... Ugh... :mneh

[Loki Ahmrah]

My computer needs to be put on a life support machine - no matter, I'll be wiping the hard drive soon.

[Morgan Evanar]

I love NT and its derivatives (2k, XP)

I can defrag while I browse the web and listen to MP3s.

[Marcus Telcontar]

It's a pity XP drivers for the video card on my laptop keep crashing :(

[Anbira Hicchoru]

I have a "random soundcard voodoo" problem with SB live on XP. This is to say that once in a blue moon, I have no sound. I rectify this by simply reinstalling my drivers :)

Open & shut :p

[Morgan Evanar]

That would be attributable to Creative's god awful ****ty drivers (poor language, yes, but they are). Creative also didn't bother to follow the PCI 2.1 specs.

Solutions: Hercules Fortissimo II, Philips Acoustic Edge, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.

[Charley]

I was *this* close to getting Turtle Beach drivers when I ordered my computer to begin with :)

Oh well...its not an issue anymore :)...I think ^_^;

[Morgan Evanar]

The card you would have gotten would not have been the Santa Cruz. You would have likely ended up with a Turtle Beach Montego II, an Aureal Vortex II based card.

While a3d 2.0 was/is a vastly superiour 3d sound API to EAX, the win2k support is non existant and the company tanked about 2 years ago. =/

I had (have, but it may as well be a paperweight) a Diamond Monstersound MX300 (same chip, the Vortex 2), and it beat the holy hell out of the Live! series, and the 3d sound is somewhat better than what my Acoustic Edge offers.

[Laran Katern]

I coudln't get my defrag to work with 98se. kept going to like 3% done and would start over. I had to download an outside program to do 'er up for me. Can't remember the name of it though

[Sith Ahnk]

Oh, something I heard. Man in the balkans was just found in the mountains. He could barely speak ow, but explained he has been hiding in the mountains while the Balkan(think thats right) war went on, living off berries, the only regular visitor was a bear who used to scratch nearby. Shows how well he hid himself. The war ended six years ago :)

Why didn't he kill and eatthe bear? I bet he'd be a lot better off...

[Lord DarkStar]

XP is the best of the windows so far...i can't find a program that will play DVD's on it though :( so i'm not completely happy with it

[Darth Vader]

Try Power DVD.

[TheHolo.Net]

Besides that you can use WinDVD, or XP has a built in software DVD player, namely Windows Media Player. Or you can search your hard drive for "dvdplay.exe", which my version of XP also came with native.

[Sanis Prent]

(Kills windvd)

GAH...blasphemer! Utter crap!


It defines the term "vanilla" No screen cap ability

[ReaperFett]

My DVD playing software stopped working. Never did sort it out

[Marcus Telcontar]

One note on Media Player for DVD playback, I found I had to load WinDVD first before Media player recognised DVD's. Didnt really dig into that, but I believe it was because a decoder for my DVD is not native to XP.

Personally, I dont like Media Player - harder on the system and playback quality is not a good. I have also WinDVD and PowerDVD - WinDVD because I like the control set and it seems to playback clearer, PowerDVD solely for the screencapture.

[Sanis Prent]

DT, one misconception of lower quality in Power DVD may be due to the fact that Power DVD allows dynamically-sizeable windows to view the movie, and the default setting is usually smaller. A smaller window not only by its very nature isn't as detailed, but also has to compete if you have any lighter-color applications in the background. Max its size, and you'll be happy.

The only gripe I have about Power DVD is that the audio settings are kinda subdued. I have to turn up my system's sound to get it to sound good.

[Shawn]

Also, PowerDVD 3.0 is a huge improvement over 2.0

I agree that the sound seems somewhat softer when using it, but hey - that's why I have a volume knob on my speakers, right? :)

[Sanis Prent]

No probs manually adjusting sound, although the next person who signs into AOL when I'm watching VHD: Bloodlust is going to be billed for my subsequent hearing aid.

[Seerrasseei Tsseerra]

Originally posted by Sanis Prent
No probs manually adjusting sound, although the next person who signs into AOL when I'm watching VHD: Bloodlust is going to be billed for my subsequent hearing aid.

*winces* I hate that, it especially hurts if you're listening to a cd loud.....