Last Thursday's Step By Step feature on spring cleaning a PC's disk drive - technically not part of Ask Jack - dominated the week's email. Not everyone was able to complete every step, but the only common problems are described here under Scan & defrag. Deryck Johnson proposed a different solution: let a program do the work. He recommends Webroot's Window Washer (www.webroot.com/washer.htm). "This little package will perform all you have described and more every time you either open or close Windows or at the click of an icon. A great timesaver for those who appreciate good housekeeping," he says. (There is also a MacWasher for Mac users.) However, Window Washer is not free. It is shareware and costs $29.95 to register.

Scan & defrag
When I run ScanDisk, I eventually get a message that says: "ScanDisk has restarted 10 times because Windows or another program has been writing to this drive. Quitting some running programs may enable ScanDisk to finish sooner." But, as far as I can tell, no programs are actually running. Michael Beales
bealesm@onetel.net.uk

· When cleaning my C: drive, it all seemed to work perfectly until I came to the defragmenting. After an hour, the progress bar was fluctuating between 0 and 4%. What I should do?
Andrew Campbell
andrewjcampbell@talk21.com

Jack Schofield replies: Both ScanDisk and Disk Defragmenter are fussy: they don't like other programs using the drive at the same time. Often they are interrupted by background programs that you may not be able to see, such as virus scanners. The simple solution is to give your PC the "three fingered salute", Ctrl-Alt-Del. This pops up a task list of the programs that Windows is running. Select the one you think may be causing the problem and click End Task. You can close down everything except Explorer and Systray, the System Tray.

Alternatively run ScanDisk from MS-DOS. Go to Start| Shut Down, select Restart in MS-DOS Mode, and type scandisk at the prompt.

Microsoft has an article about tackling this ScanDisk problem.

If that does not help, there are another 18 articles about ScanDisk problems on Microsoft.

Disk Defragmenter problems can be tackled in the same way. In this case, Microsoft has an advice note, and there are another 20 articles to look through on the site.

The best approach is often to restart your PC in Safe Mode and run Disk Defragmenter from there.

Virus check
I tried to download F-Prot, which you recommended as a free virus checker. However, it seems it is no longer free.
Harold
kelowna@glbanks.fsnet.co.uk

JS :Frisk Software International's F-Prot is still available free for home (non-commercial) use. It is only available to run under MS-DOS, but this does not stop it from finding Windows viruses and macro viruses. A helpful place to download it is Don Schneider's Unofficial Aptiva Support Site.

Once you have the program, you only have to download new virus definition files, Sing.def and Macro.def.

The paid-for version, FP-WIN, includes F-Prot for Windows 95/98/NT, F-Prot for DOS, F-StopW and F-Macrow for $25. You can download a trial copy from www.complex.is/f-prot/

Caps locked
On June 14 you gave an address to download a program to disable the PC's caps lock key. The URL now says it is no longer available.
C P Young
pyoung@vipintersoft.com

JS: Sorry, I can no longer find a source for the free version of this program, AntiCapsLock Lite. However, you can still get the more versatile version from www.orionsoft.cz. It is shareware and costs $10 to register.

Desk to laptop
Can I transfer my Favorites from my desktop PC (Windows 98) to my laptop (Windows ME) by floppy disk? If so, how?
Roy Bland
roy@bellives.demon.co.uk

JS: Each Favorite - a link to a website - is stored as a separate file in special directory at C:\Windows\Favorites. You can simply copy these files and folders from one PC to the Favorites folder on another. Internet Explorer also lets you import and export Favorites, to move them or to make a handy back-up. Go to the File menu and select Import and Export. A wizard will take you through the process.

Back chat

· Chris Dunn wanted a quiet PC. I did not know of any, but several readers suggested Carillon Audio Systems, which Richard Kitch says "has just started selling PCs designed to eliminate noise for use by musicians." See www.carillondirect.com. Stuart Paterson also mentioned Red Submarine (www.sub.co.uk), another company that sells to musicians. Both have been featured in Sound on Sound magazine.

· Ronnie Hope wanted a TV-out card for his PC, so that he could watch DVD movies on his TV set. Phil Kemp says that as long as you don't want to use the TV as a second monitor, a Realmagic Hollywood Plus MPEG-2 decoder card does the job. See www.imagomicro.co.uk/Sigma/hollywood.htm. Phil bought the same device from a different supplier, packaged as a Lilith DVD card.

· John Marshall wanted a free mailing list server to replace Microsoft's ListBot, and I suggested Topica (www.topica.com/services/listbot.html). William Hudson points out that you can run your own lists from Yahoo Groups, formerly eGroups, and he does. Go to http://groups.yahoo.com.