Kendall

Guest, Jeri has the right idea if you really have to close everything.

I just started defrag on my C: drive, with WinExplorer, Win98 Help, IE5, and a Microsoft Word doc all open, and it ran well into the 20% range before I stopped it.

You should be up to 3% or so in less than a minute, or maybe 2. Something is writing to your drive at least that often.

Are you on a "permanent" net connection?

I noted Real Audio in the discussion above. Have you had it installed for at least a few weeks before the problem started? Microsoft has had a warning about earlier versions, and it did totally trash my system when I tried to install it. The newest version (a month ago) caused me enough problems that I took it off. If it's worked for you for a while, don't worry about it - but if it's new, it might be suspect.

I found one file in the Mickey$oft Knowledge Base relating to "failure to open IE from email hyperlink," and it did implicate a conflict between IE and the "audio" system. Unfortunately - it applies only to Mac IE.

But then, defrag isn't the real problem - the fact that it doesn't work does indicate a system problem, and the reason for coming back to it is that we hope it's a "fix one - fix all" situation. Probably wishful thinking.

John