Cannot get Disk Defragmenter to work

[Matthew99]

It keeps saying ChkDsk is scheduled to run and that I should run Chkdsk /f. But whenever I do this Chkdsk won't run either. Anyone suggestions?

[Berniedog]

Are you attempting to defragment from Properties/Tools menu of the drive in My Computer, or from the command line in a console window? Defrag won't run if it thinks there are errors on the drive, and you need to run chkdsk /f to cure them. (In Properties/Tools for the drive, select Check Now, and in Check disk options, check "Automatically fix file system errors"). And if it your boot drive, Windows will complain that it can't do it because the drive is in use, and will ask if you want it done when you reboot. If you say yes, and reboot, Windows will run chkdsk before the GUI loads and it has exclusive access to the drive. If this is not your boot drive, you may be able to open a CMD window (Start/Run/cmd) and run chkdsk from there. "chkdsk <drive> /f /x" will dismount the drive to provide exclusive access and run chkdsk in "fix errors" mode. IF Windows still doesn't think it can get exclusive access to teh drive, you'll be asked the question about running it on reboot. Defrag will also complain if you have less than 15% of the drive free, but *will* run. It just won't do as effective a job.