Windows 7 Windows 7 Disk Defragmenter doesn't list C drive

[Jarby]

Hi all,

I've scoured the internet in search of a solution to this. I'm sure the solution to this must be pretty simple.

When I open disk defragmenter it doesn't list my C drive -- which is the primary internal HD on which the OS, windows 7 64 bit, is installed. I have another partition that came with my computer (Dell Studio XPS) on which Dell has some a backup recovery image on, and this drive 'Recovery (D' _does_ show up. Just the 'OS (C' drive does not -- which happens to be the drive I'd like to defrag.

I haven't tried any other defrag programs yet. I'm the administrator user on this computer if that's relevent. Also, if I go to properties on my C drive via my computer and click defrag from there, it'll open disk defragmenter and still just list the D drive.

Any suggestions?

 

[Highwayman]

personally i'd ditch the windows app anyway...3rd party app like the free Auslogic defrag is faster anyway.

 

[Jarby]

i've considered that, but at this point i'm more bothered about this problem than actually getting to defrag my system, haha.

 

[Highwayman]

true but would be an experiment to see if other apps see it at all....

 

[Jarby]

alright i'll give it a shot. is there a lightweight freestanding one i can try that doesn't require installation? ideally recommended for win7 64? i prefer to refrain from installing bloaty software on my new system whenever possible, haha.

 

[Highwayman]

well the aforementioned auslogic one is tiny install (7mb footprint), and doesnt come with adware crap

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/download

 

[Tommy2123]

Same problem

ok so having the same problem and i have tryed other stand alond and other defrags i had to install, and it has ben really recent that it just dissapeared out of my defrag.

 

[turbik]

The drive does not show up in windows defrag utility if it has been flagged dirty (caused by abnormal system shutdown etc). You have to run the checkdisk utility (right click on drive C - properties - tools - check now). After a successful run, the flag is cleared. You may have to restart computer. After this, it should show up again in the defrag utility.

 

[robmars83]

I dont know how these forums work but I was having this problem as well and I did all the things you guys said to do Now my computer doesnt work at all... it says BOOTMGR is Missing and my computer will not do anything...

 

[Highwayman]

if the bootmgr is gone you may need to check the C: drive with the windows installer itself which has a toolkit the fix that issue if you didn't have the emergency recovery disk to hand... here's a link to information on the subject, which although is about vista, works the same exact way for windows 7.

Link Removed

 

[Joe S]

This is just a users forum people trying to help each other.
Joe

 

[Mike]

I dont know how these forums work but I was having this problem as well and I did all the things you guys said to do Now my computer doesnt work at all... it says BOOTMGR is Missing and my computer will not do anything...

Follow Highwayman's advise. If you regain access to the drive, start backing up everything. You need to check the results of the chkdsk if you can get back into Windows and determine if it flagged bad sectors. It sounds like the hard drive is starting to break down. If that is the case, you may have a very short period of time to back up your stuff before everything goes down the drain.

You can find the results of chkdsk by running Event Viewer (Start -> Search -> Event Viewer), go to Windows Logs, Application, Search for "Checking file system" (Ctrl-F for Search). You can filter for it, but it will sometimes come up as either event ID WinInit (Event ID 1001) or Chkdsk itself. It will come up as a ChkDsk (Event IDs 26214, 26212) when you do read only ones in Windows.

Get this information and find out if it has isolated bad sectors, otherwise you may just have major corruption on the drive. In any event, as soon as you gain access to your OS again, you should immediately start doing a backup.