Well,
markjoy, I went to the 98 site and downloaded his defrag program. I have no screensaver and no pretty picture either so had nothing to stop there. I turned off my router but didn't go into dos or safe mode. There was nothing open except the new defrag.
I ran it for five hours showing details so I would be entertained at least a little. It never got beyond "check for errors", counting up exactly as before from 0% until 4% before dropping back to 0% again. Each cycle took exactly 45 seconds which amounted to 400 cycles - and that was all that happened! It never got to defragging, only checking for errors on 4% of the disc 400 times!
Gloom!
Where do I put the bullet?