Defragging at system boot up

[Maleko]

I am curious as whether or not it's possible to do offline defragmentation without the help of bootcd. Does anyone know how windows runs a system chkdsk at boot up, you know that text mode after bios initializing but right before windows starting up? Is it possible to run mydefrag like that?

[jonib]

Chkdsk and other programs that can run early in the Windows boot process, use Windows Native API and it's different to what Windows programs use when run after it has booted up.

MyDefrag don't support this. Read this FAQ fow to run it as early as possible: How to run MyDefrag at boot-time?.

jonib

[Maleko]

I see but this isn't something impossible to add into mydefrag, right? I see some commercial defragmenting tools and also disk partitioners could do this sort of thing.

Maybe mydefrag author, jeroen could say something about this.

[jeroen]

this isn't something impossible to add into mydefrag, right?

Native programs can use only a very small set of system calls, because they must run while Windows is not yet started. It is therefore not possible to take a Windows program (such as MyDefrag) and simply add some stuff so it will work in the Native environment. To make a version of MyDefrag that works in the Native environment I would basically have to start from scratch, it would be a completely new program. It has been on my wishlist for a long time to do that, but it has a very low priority for various reasons.

[Maleko]

To make a version of MyDefrag that works in the Native environment I would basically have to start from scratch, it would be a completely new program. It has been on my wishlist for a long time to do that, but it has a very low priority for various reasons.

Ah fair enough Thanks for the clarification, jeroen!

[boco]

The only free defragger with boot defrag support I know is UltraDefrag (Open Source). http://ultradefrag.sf.net/

[Steve]

What about booting off a usb stick that has Windows installed there and then defragmenting your main drive? Could you then move system files?

[ScorpionGTfx]

There is Puran Defrag too.

[Darlis]

What about booting off a usb stick that has Windows installed there and then defragmenting your main drive? Could you then move system files?

You would be able to move for example the pagefile and other non critical files, but special files like $logfile will always be unmovable if you use the original Windows NTFS driver that comes with every Windows system.

[Tokafondo]

There is someone that has made a step towards native mode management:

http://amdf.pp.ru/nt_native_application_shell_eng.php

[jeroen]

Thanks for that link, interesting. I'm afraid it doesn't change much as MyDefrag is concerned, though. I see that at the moment it is not possible to run a program from that console, but even if that were possible then it would still not be possible to run MyDefrag like that. Only programs that are specially programmed for native mode can be run in native mode.

[amdf]

Thanks for that link, interesting.

The site is moved to http://hex.pp.ua/nt-native-applications-shell-eng.php

I see that at the moment it is not possible to run a program from that console, but even if that were possible then it would still not be possible to run MyDefrag like that. Only programs that are specially programmed for native mode can be run in native mode.

Current version (0.12) can run another processes, but they should be native apps too. It is not possible to run a win32 exe from native mode, because win32 subsystem is not active at that time. Only native apps such as autochk.exe can start.