[mdameron]

42% complete on defragging my hard drive, the whole machine reboots! No error messages at all! Not even a courtesy blue screen of death!

In the status bar it says "Compacting files"...

Any ideas? Or maybe another program that is better at defragging/error checking? I am just using the utility listed under "Tools" in Windows XP home...

 

[zother]

Norton System Works (Disk Doctor in particular) can be very valuable in this circumstance.

Did you try running Scan Disk using the suface scan option?

 

[xms]

What make is your PSU? Sometimes when a machine is under a high load (as it would be during a defrag) the system may reboot.

 

[mdameron]

Well, I am going to try messing with a few things. Good points both of you, but my PSU is a good one, it's gone 48 hours straight folding, so I'm pretty sure it's ok for a defrag. I don't really have the money to buy norton, but I will see what happens when I do the error checker.

I really think it has something to do with my new Omega video card drivers. This morning, the machine had a hell of a time trying to boot, and finally got to the desktop about the 5th try (it was just rebooting right before the desktop would appear). Then, when it finally got to the desktop, it wanted to send the error report, so I let it, and then an IE window popped up saying this problem is caused by a device driver...