DISK DEFRAG NOT GOING ANYWHERE?

Too many time have I seen or hear the problem of the disk defrag getting to 10%, or even 60% and then restarting.  The solution is usually to reboot your system and start in safe mode.  If you have Windows XP this will never be a problem, but for those using 98 or ME then you are going to want to do the following:

In the Registry (yes, this means you are editing the brains of your operating system so if you feel uneasy about this then you should be hiring a professional), navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Applets \ Defrag \ Settings.  Now you will see a list of four important subkeys:  Disable loadqm.exe, Disable loadwc.exe, Disable ScreenSaver, and Disable Wkdetect.exe.  Now double click on each of these entries (Default) values and set them to "YES" (in the right-hand pane). 

But what else gets interrupted with disk activity? Scandisk.  So, in the same Applets hierarchy, scroll down the list until you see the Scandisk key.  Continue to cascade through to its Settings key and you will find:  Disable loadqm.exe, Disable loadwc.exe, and Diisable ScreenSaver.  Do the same thing here as you did for the Defrag key.  NOTE:  this will only suspend operation of those utilities while Defrag or Scandisk are being run.  LOADWC.EXE (Windows Update Checker), LOADQM.EXE (Query Manger), and WKDETECT.EXE (Update Checker for Microsoft Works) can safely be turned off in the Startup tab of MSCONFIG.