On my old laptop with Win98, I run the degragmentor and when it gets to 10% it restarts and says something like, "windows files have changed since last degrag., restarting..." Every time it gets to 10% it restarts and never gets anywhere.......... Are there any fixes to remedy this?

Scandisk.exe doesn't seem to get anywhere either, it restarts frequently when executed.Sounds like something is running that is altering Windows files while it's running. Make sure everything that can be closed is closed. All unnecessary running processes should be shut down, especially AV programs, as they can interfere with scanning.

I can't remember, can 98 run defrag in safemode? If so, that would work better. Less running.My old Gateway desktop is the same way. Hit ctrl alt delete to see what programs are running before you start scandisk or defrag. Highlight and end task all but the explorer window. Start with the programs you regognize as there is an order to some of these & if you shut down the wrong one first the screen will go black. Once you have closed all but explorer the maintenance wizard will work fine or you can scandisk & defrag in stand ALONE mode. Safe mode sounds like a possible fix..

Is there a way to view the processes in Win98, to see what's in RAM...I just manually removed 18 viruses and belive there may be more.........I've been having problems getting a scan to run.......Spybot S&D crashes before it even fully loads, and it is suppose to be compatible with win98.You might want to pop over to the Computer viruses and spyware forum and post the required logs there. One of the malware experts can help get that cleaned up.

I didn't want to jump the gun and say it the first time, but now that you've said they're there, those viruses are most likely why you can't complete defrag.Well I downloaded, Windows Process Viewer 1.1 and did some checking on the current processes running and nothing bad is there at the moment...But I will check the VIRUS forum anyway.Quote from: hot dog on April 21, 2009, 10:16:35 AM

Well I downloaded, Windows Process Viewer 1.1 and did some checking on the current processes running and nothing bad is there at the moment...But I will check the virus forum anyway.

On my old laptop with Win98, I run the degragmentor and when it gets to 10% it restarts and says something like, "windows files have changed since last degrag., restarting..." Every time it gets to 10% it restarts and never gets anywhere.......... Are there any fixes to remedy this?

Scandisk.exe doesn't seem to get anywhere either, it restarts frequently when executed.

Spybot S&D doesn't work well with Win 98. AVAST will & it's also free.

Did you try closing the programs and then running scandisk & defrag like I suggested? It only takes a minute or two to close them and get started.

And, I'll keep in mind that .dlls are viruses....