Help! My brother has Windows Me and we cannot get it to scan disk or defrag. I had a similar problem a couple years ago before I developed enough brains to upgrade to XP; but I cannot remember what I did (or was told) to do. The computer is a HP and has lots of free HD space. Any suggestions? Gary P.

Hi McGareth,

I use to have this problem when it has others applications running in background.

Have you try to close most of the programs using ctrl+alt+del?

You can also try to reboot into the safe mode to run Scandisk and others System Tools.

best regards

Winandy - or somebody,
Thanks for the help. My brother and I tried to get into Safe Mode, but we are dummies and cannot remember how, for certain. We did try shutting down and restarting while hitting first F1, then on retry, F8. What is the key or other method? Thanks McGareth

Hi McGareth...tapping the F8 key repeatedly after the RAM count should work. Holding down the CTRL key as the system restarts should get you to a boot menu where you can select safe mode. If those fail, try the Msconfig method as described here.