Cannot Defrag

Have you tried pressing defrag a second time? Sometimes it rethinks and does a bit more. The other thing you could try, if you have the .mad file on CD, delete it from the hard drive, defrag again, then copy it back from the CD and defrag again. If you don't have it on CD, copy it to another location, say temp folder, delete the original defrag again, copy back from the temp folder, delete in the temp folder, defrag again. (copy and delete is better than move, which might just change the address of the file without creating a new copy of it on disk).  The MFT fragmentation is normal, defrag can't do it, but if it worries you you could look at full versions of Diskeeper (I think that the XPO defrag is a 'lite' version of earlier version of diskeeper)

http://www.execsoft.co.uk/html/diskeeper/diskeeper1.htm

or any other of several defrag programs that do a bit more than the built in XP one.

Thanks for your help. I just wanted to be sure there was nothing wrong.

did it work?

Quick question:

you said:      "The other thing you could try, if you have the .mad file on CD, delete it from the hard drive, defrag again, then copy it back from the CD and defrag again."

I assume you mean to delete it using add/remove programs, then reinstall?

Clicking defrag a second time didn't work & I have not yet tried the other advise you gave.

Thanks for the interest.

Nope - just back up the individual file to a CD, then delete it, defrag, and copy it back to the original location.  As long as you don't access Microsoft MapPoint, you shouldn't have any issues doing that. 

One other thought - check to see if there is any component of MS MapPoint loaded at startup through msconfig.  It may be getting loaded without your knowing it, and that may be why you can't defrag it...

Message Edited by jjmspartan on 11-09-2003 09:17 PM

Just confirming that jimspartan correctly interpreted what I meant. Judging by its folder location the file is a database file  for MapPoint, temporarily deleting it from its current position, defragging and then replacing it will not affect subsequent operation of MapPoint; the idea is simply to try to get it to be relocated as one contiguous file on the drive. Whilst this is not always 100% successful, it should at least reduce its fragmentation.

As I understood it, it was a.mad extension (access database module), part of MS MapPoint, so not a system file.

As far as I can guess, most files that cannot be defragmented tend to be marked as system files.  Maybe that's what's going on with that .dat file.

As for resolving it....sometimes files can be defragmented when you boot into Safe Mode.  If the partition is not NTFS, maybe you can try running a DOS based defragmenter.

If that does not work, you can try booting from a WinXP boot CD and run a defragmenter from there.  Search the forums here for Bart's PEBuilder for details.  I use Vopt XP Defragmenter with my WinPE CD, but other folks have found a way to run the basic WinXP defragmenter.

The method of deleting it, defragmenting the drive, then recopying the file, would be quick and easy...but of course it does not address the problem.

True, but as we all know, Micro$oft likes to stick the system attribute on some of their files in their applications occasionally, just for the heck of it seemingly...