Quick question on hard drive defraging

[surferpop]

What prompts w98 to not move[when diplayed you see a white box with a small red box in the corner] certain files when you defragment the hard drive? What's special about these files?

[TnT]

A lot of those unmovable files are your swap file too. I only get those in my C: partition and that is where I have my swap file.

[Hunsow]

Those files are read-only. Just uncheck the read-only tag and they will be moved as well.

[surferpop]

Thanks for all the responses.
Hunsow-If I wanted to move them( is there any reason to?) how would I
find out which files they are so I could
uncheck read only?

[Helmchen]

Try Norton Speed Disk, it's ways faster and moves everything, even your swapfile. It moves your files by criterias you can precisely specify.

Helmchen

[Hunsow]

Just go to DOS (real DOS not a DOS box) and be sure to be in path C:\ then execute "c:\windows\command\attrib -r /s".

[surferpop]

Thanks to all.

[TnT]

To get into true DOS when the computer boots up starting hitting the F8 key until you get the Win9x boot menu and you can select Command Prompt only. This loads DOS without ever getting into Windows.
Supposedly you are supposed to hit the F8 key right before Win9x boots and that gives you the prompt but most people cannot do it in time.

[paul]

If you've got a logo instead of bios screen, it gets tough to time F8.

Those red boxes may not be many files, but one long file that's not stored contiguously.
If you have Norton, check 'optimize swap file' or similar option to clean that up, too.

[TnT]

That is why I recommend tapping the F8 key frantically as soon as your computer finishes counting your RAM.

[Jorden]

Pressing F5 (or shift+F5) gets you into DOS instantly...

[agallag]

In win98 you can also hold down ctrl to get into the startup menu.