My computer has recently been slow and occasionally erratic and I
suspect that it needs defragmantaion. Attempts to defragment disk c:
results in defragmantation activity by the computer lasting for over 2
hours with no end in sight. On one such occasion the computer
suggested removing Norton Internet Security and reinstalling it after
defragmantation is complete. Would removing Norton not place it on the
"recycled" file which is in c: and thus continue causing the
interferance with defragmantation?

My computer is a pentium with windows 98 and the FAT32 File system for
disk c: Besides disk c: it has 2 older phisical disks with the FAT16
file system

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Clarification of Question by vaac-ga on 03 Jul 2006 22:04 PDT

Thank you all for your comments.Can anybody tell me if the computer
should be connected to the internet during defragmantation or
disconnected

Have you tried it in safe mode?

If unseccessful still, try it in "Command Prompt".  Degragmentation
should finish unless there are serious problems on your drive.

The problem with Norton Internet Security is not that its presence on
the disk interferes with defragmentation.  The problem is more likely
that it is running some background process that changes disk files,
and that activity is what interferes with defragmentation.  So
removing and reinstalling it may help.

I beleive efn is right.  Changing files while defragging will slow
things down immensely.  However, if you have a large disk,
defragmentation can take quite a while anyway.  You shouldn't have to
uninstall anything.  Just turn it off before you defrag.