Hello Sarah, if you haven't use delindex.bat from
www.burzurq.com now is the time to add it to your '98 bootdiskette AND put it on your HDD at C:\delindex.bat
You can then either run: C:\>delindex run , or: A:\>delindex run , and clear a lot of the old files that slow '98 down and become impossible to defrag such as the index.dat files.
You'll see the increase in the free-space on the drive before and after running delindex.
Now try defrag again. (You'll know that you can use the defrag.exe from ME which is a lot faster than the '98 defrag.exe.(?))
You can also use Diskeeper Lite which is free and lets you see the entire drive in one window, AND/OR you caninstall ScanDefrag which will defrag the drive at boottime. (After a re-boot and before loading Windows)
That is what I use on ME.
Another reason which sometimes occurs with '98 has to do with the drive cluster size.
This depends on your drive size and the size of any partitions you may have.
Some '98 installations run the disk utilities better when the cluster size is 8192 bytes per allocation unit.
You can check this by running ScanDisk.
Some other junk file cleaners I use on ME & XP are EmpTemp which is great for storing cookies you want to keep & CCleaner.
It helps to have enough RAM, especially if you have been continually adding programs to your computer.
