Unable To Analyse Or Defragment Drive

[MOLITTLE]

When selecting ANALYSE or DEFRAGMENT on my D drive which contains Norton Ghost Backups it says cannot be done run chkdsk /f.
I did this for drive D and it said "Chqdsk cannot run because the vol is in use by another process. Chqdsk may run if the vol is dismounted first ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD BE INVALID, would you like to force a dismount (Y/N) I replied N.
It said would you like to schedule this vol to be checked the next time the system restarts Y/N I said Y. I restarted the PC and a blue screen flashed through saying something about chqdsk but too fast to read.
I then tried to select ANALYSE but same message.
I forgot to say I wasn't running anything at all when I tried to Analyze/Defragment and I don't really understand what is happening. Your help would be appreciated.

[Buenchico]

>>>I don't really understand what is happening

That makes two of us!

However if there's a background program accessing your hard drive (preventing you from running system tools on it) the obvious solution would seem to be to kill that background program. To do so, you can either go to the Task Manager and close all running processes except those which are absolutely essential or, far simpler, boot into Safe Mode (which is usually done via pressing F8 during the boot process) and then try to run the system tools from there.

[bibblebub]

I fyou have Windows 8:-

http://www.howtogeek.com/107511/how-to-boot-into-safe-mode-on-windows-8-the-easy-way/

Using F8 to get into safe mode for Windows 8, 8.1 doesn't work (as far as I'm aware); going via the advanced settings as given in that article quite often doesn't work when I try it, but running msconfig.exe works every time. In that program choose the Boot tab and in the bottom left corner are the safe boot options n.b. your computer will continue to boot up into safe mode until you run msconfig.exe again and reset the safe boot option.

[bibblebub]

I've just noticed in that article that you need to hold down Shift with F8 (which is where I've been going wrong) but it still may or may not get you to the troubleshooting options; the msconfig.exe approach works every time.

[MOLITTLE]

Thank you for your help. I have an older PC and am running Windows XP do I still press F8 to get into safe mode.

[Buenchico]

F8 works on most computers but you'll occasionally find one where the manufacturer decided to use something different! (You'll typically be presented with a set of options which are navigated by using the up and down arrows and then pressing 'Enter').

Incidentally, I use XP and the tools built into Windows told me that the drive was only 2% fragmented and didn't require defragging. Using a third party defrag tool (built into Glary Utilities) I found that the drive was 47% fragmented!
http://www.glarysoft.com/

[MOLITTLE]

Thank you all for your help. From Safe Mode I entered the chkdsk command which and no errors were shown in the report. I have just logged back in and done the defragment which worked. Once again many thanks.

[Daffy6543]

There isn't really any need to defrag computers, why were you doing it?