My Windows 8.1 disk defragger is dead

Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

On 5/2/2015 8:58 PM, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis
Have you ever run it?

Did you try to activate it from the new Start or Apps menus?
"Defragment and Optimize Disk"

If you can not find it have you looked at the Disk Properties Tools?

Things are pretty will hidden in Windows 8.1 so you may not find in with
a standarad search.

Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

The defragmenter should not run if a SSD is being used.
But that should not affect the ability to run it. Just that
if you had C: on an SSD, and clicked to get C: defragmented,
the tool would refuse the request.

It could be, that malware replaced dfrg.exe, your AV
removed the malware, leaving nothing in its place.

Something like sfc /scannow might put it back, but
I don't put a lot of faith in that tool myself. It
was more trouble than it was worth.

When is the last time you did a complete AV scan ?
I would want to make sure the thing is clean, before
wasting time on it. Just to scope out the scale of
repairs needed.

Paul

Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

Windows Core or Pro ?
Hard drive (rotational) or SSD ?

Last time run ?


--
...winston
msft mvp consumer apps

On Sun 03-May-15 12:26 AM, . . .winston wrote:
Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

Windows Core or Pro ?

Core.

Hard drive (rotational) or SSD ?

Rotational, not SSD.

Last time run ?

By the Windows scheduler, last November but not since. By me, I've tried
for the last three weeks but it does not run at all. Today I received an
error message that the Disk Defragger is not installed.

Thanks for your help. Anything else will be appreciated.

On Sat 02-May-15 06:24 PM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2015-05-02 8:58 PM, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

http://www.piriform.com/defraggler


I am very familiar with Defraggler because I used it many times on
previous computers. I also am very familiar with many 3d party
defraggers, but right now I wish to fix my system so the built-in
Windows defragger will work as intended.

Thanks for your help.

On Sat 02-May-15 07:02 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 5/2/2015 8:58 PM, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis
Have you ever run it?

Yes. The Windows scheduler ran it as late as last November but not
since. I have been trying to run it manually for the last three weeks
but w/o any success.


Did you try to activate it from the new Start or Apps menus? "Defragment
and Optimize Disk"

Yes, and it simply does not run.


If you can not find it have you looked at the Disk Properties Tools?

At your suggestion I tried that any received the following error message:

"The Disk Defragmenter is not installed on your computer. To install it,
double-click the Add or Remove Programs icon in Control Panel, click the
Install/Uninstall tab, and then follow the instructions on your screen."

So I followed the bouncing ball, but there is no "Install/Uninstall tab"
anywhere in my Control Panel. So, no luck there. Do you know of any way
I can reinstall the defragger w/o having to refresh the whole system?



Things are pretty will hidden in Windows 8.1 so you may not find in with
a standarad search.

I have been finding that out the hard way.

Thanks so much for your help. Anything further will be greatly appreciated.

On Sat 02-May-15 08:35 PM, Paul wrote:
Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it
intact. Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

The defragmenter should not run if a SSD is being used.
But that should not affect the ability to run it. Just that
if you had C: on an SSD, and clicked to get C: defragmented,
the tool would refuse the request.

my drive is not SSD. I should have mentioned that. Sorry.



It could be, that malware replaced dfrg.exe, your AV
removed the malware, leaving nothing in its place.

Something like sfc /scannow might put it back, but
I don't put a lot of faith in that tool myself. It
was more trouble than it was worth.


I did run sfc /scannow about a week ago and it said nothing was wrong.
Today when I tried to run the defragger manually an error message said
that Disk Defragger is not installed on my system. So it used to be
there but is now gone. You may be right on about my AV removing it.

When is the last time you did a complete AV scan ?
I would want to make sure the thing is clean, before
wasting time on it. Just to scope out the scale of
repairs needed.

I did a complete AV scan about a month ago. It came up clean.

Apparently the Windows deragger is gone. Any idea how I can get it
reinstalled w/o having to refresh the whole system?

Thanks so much for your help.

Paul

On 02-May-2015 20:58, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

This is for win7 but should work for Win8 especially para 7.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...c-68b599b31bf5

http://preview.tinyurl.com/qchgg2l

On 5/3/2015 4:46 PM, Noip wrote:
On Sat 02-May-15 07:02 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 5/2/2015 8:58 PM, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis
Have you ever run it?

Yes. The Windows scheduler ran it as late as last November but not
since. I have been trying to run it manually for the last three weeks
but w/o any success.


Did you try to activate it from the new Start or Apps menus? "Defragment
and Optimize Disk"

Yes, and it simply does not run.


If you can not find it have you looked at the Disk Properties Tools?

At your suggestion I tried that any received the following error message:

"The Disk Defragmenter is not installed on your computer. To install it,
double-click the Add or Remove Programs icon in Control Panel, click the
Install/Uninstall tab, and then follow the instructions on your screen."

So I followed the bouncing ball, but there is no "Install/Uninstall tab"
anywhere in my Control Panel. So, no luck there. Do you know of any way
I can reinstall the defragger w/o having to refresh the whole system?



Things are pretty will hidden in Windows 8.1 so you may not find in with
a standarad search.

I have been finding that out the hard way.

Thanks so much for your help. Anything further will be greatly appreciated.

I did some exploring on my system and found the name is different for
the Defrag.

See if you havd

Windows\system32\dfrgui.exe

This is the file that the short cut "De fragment and Optimize" points to

On 5/3/2015 6:09 PM, Disguised wrote:
On 02-May-2015 20:58, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

This is for win7 but should work for Win8 especially para 7.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...c-68b599b31bf5


http://preview.tinyurl.com/qchgg2l

Quote from URL "1. The disk is too full (you need at least 15% free
space, sometimes 20%). Solution: Delete unneeded files and programs till
you have more than 20% free space."

I tried to help my sister in law with her computer. She likes to take
pictures. She had her disk disk full of pictures. The defrag program
would not run.

How much free space do you have on you disk.

If it is nearly full you may wish to consider off loading some of your
data, to an external drive. They are relatively cheap $70 for 1TB and
you can also back up what you leave on the main drive.

On 03-May-2015 18:19, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 5/3/2015 6:09 PM, Disguised wrote:
On 02-May-2015 20:58, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

This is for win7 but should work for Win8 especially para 7.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...c-68b599b31bf5



http://preview.tinyurl.com/qchgg2l

Quote from URL "1. The disk is too full (you need at least 15% free
space, sometimes 20%). Solution: Delete unneeded files and programs till
you have more than 20% free space."

I tried to help my sister in law with her computer. She likes to take
pictures. She had her disk disk full of pictures. The defrag program
would not run.

How much free space do you have on you disk.

If it is nearly full you may wish to consider off loading some of your
data, to an external drive. They are relatively cheap $70 for 1TB and
you can also back up what you leave on the main drive.





True but the op said :
Today I received an error message that the Disk Defragger is not installed.

On Sun 03-May-15 03:13 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 5/3/2015 4:46 PM, Noip wrote:
On Sat 02-May-15 07:02 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 5/2/2015 8:58 PM, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis
Have you ever run it?

Yes. The Windows scheduler ran it as late as last November but not
since. I have been trying to run it manually for the last three weeks
but w/o any success.


Did you try to activate it from the new Start or Apps menus? "Defragment
and Optimize Disk"

Yes, and it simply does not run.


If you can not find it have you looked at the Disk Properties Tools?

At your suggestion I tried that any received the following error message:

"The Disk Defragmenter is not installed on your computer. To install it,
double-click the Add or Remove Programs icon in Control Panel, click the
Install/Uninstall tab, and then follow the instructions on your screen."

So I followed the bouncing ball, but there is no "Install/Uninstall tab"
anywhere in my Control Panel. So, no luck there. Do you know of any way
I can reinstall the defragger w/o having to refresh the whole system?



Things are pretty will hidden in Windows 8.1 so you may not find in with
a standarad search.

I have been finding that out the hard way.

Thanks so much for your help. Anything further will be greatly
appreciated.

I did some exploring on my system and found the name is different for
the Defrag.

See if you havd

Windows\system32\dfrgui.exe

This is the file that the short cut "De fragment and Optimize" points to


Keith --

I have that dfrgui.exe file on my systen, but when I click on it,
nothing happens. I mean NOTHING. Both the dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files
are nowhere to be found. I've tried solutions others here have proposed
and nothing works. That's why I'm ready to pull my hair out.

Thanks so much for your help. Take care.

On Sun 03-May-15 03:09 PM, Disguised wrote:
On 02-May-2015 20:58, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

This is for win7 but should work for Win8 especially para 7.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...c-68b599b31bf5


http://preview.tinyurl.com/qchgg2l

I gave it a shot as you suggested, but nothing worked. I kept getting
error messages that the necessary files are not on my system. Somehow or
other they must have been removed. Don't ask me how because I did not
knwoingly do it. Crazy stuff, eh?

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

On Sun 03-May-15 03:19 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 5/3/2015 6:09 PM, Disguised wrote:
On 02-May-2015 20:58, Noip wrote:
Hi, All --

My first post here because I'm ready to pull my hair out.

I'm running Windows 8.1. The built in disk defragger does not work at
all. When I invoke it absolutely nothing happens. Zilch. Nothing. The
dfrg.inf and dfrg.msc files are nowhere to be found on my drive.
According to the task scheduler the defragger has not run since last
November. I have searched all over for a solution or fix and nothing
works. I have no idea what has happened. I know there are many third
party defraggers, but I would like to fix my system and have it intact.
Can someone please help me here?

Thanks very much.

Jim Davis

This is for win7 but should work for Win8 especially para 7.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...c-68b599b31bf5



http://preview.tinyurl.com/qchgg2l

Quote from URL "1. The disk is too full (you need at least 15% free
space, sometimes 20%). Solution: Delete unneeded files and programs till
you have more than 20% free space."

I tried to help my sister in law with her computer. She likes to take
pictures. She had her disk disk full of pictures. The defrag program
would not run.

How much free space do you have on you disk.

If it is nearly full you may wish to consider off loading some of your
data, to an external drive. They are relatively cheap $70 for 1TB and
you can also back up what you leave on the main drive.





My disk is only about 13% full. As I reported to you in another message
here, all the necessary files appear to be missing. I just can't figure
this out. Thanks again.