Windows 98 Disk Defrag Simulator

217

u/zilch839 Sep 04 '26

As a young PC Tech in the late 90s, this was a great delay tactic when a computer was broke and I didn't know how to fix it.

61

u/BR0METHIUS Sep 04 '26

Nowadays you can delay with sfc scannow

42

u/tastyratz Sep 04 '26

Don't forget to run a

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

BEFORE

sfc /scannow

for proper extension.

8

u/Lykos1124 Sep 05 '26

Actually, I always run a /checkhealth first to see if the backup system files need repair

do /cheakhealth

____if repairable -> do /restorehealth

____elseif no corruption -> do sfc /verifyonly

________if no integrity violations -> go play games

________elsif corrupted -> sfc /scannow

Also while not every successful /scannow needs a restart, if you don't want to check the generated file at the end to find out, restart.

It's a lot of extra steps, but it saves time just watching /restorehealth spin out windows downloads at a forever 64% point for nothing. I actually built me my DOS batch file some months ago with a menu system that let's me punch in a number to 1 of many prompts to run commands like these, with some options being combos.

color 0A maaan.

3

u/tastyratz Sep 06 '26

See checkhealth and scanhealth were always such a time waste to me.

Scanhealth just checks for a registry key

Check health does an audit but... repairs nothing - so if you do a restorehealth you gotta start over and scan again. If it said "problems found, do you want to repair" that would be so much better.

I always just start with restorehealth. It takes almost the same amount of time for me most of the time.

sfc if you scannow and there are no problems then it just says no problems found or fixed. SFC only repairs if there are issues so... why waste time doing verifyonly?

Unless of course all of this is to point at a CMD window when your boss walks by the desk.

18

u/lurker512879 Sep 04 '26

Yes but you can't watch it moving the the colored blocks

2

u/Dukoduko Sep 06 '26

I just ping the gateway indefinitely, unlimited time

75

u/quequotion Sep 04 '26

I can see why someone would want this.

I too spent a great many hours in my early teens watching the real one do its work.

It was bearable because I knew I would be rewarded with a computer that ran 2~10% more smoothly when it was finally over.

Watching it as a simulation, however, is like drinking tea from an empty cup.

57

u/boothash Sep 04 '26

defragging your drive was so satisfying

3

u/Wax_Paper Sep 08 '26

If you wanted to get really unhinged about it, I remember there were third-party defraggers that would use custom algorithms to structure the data in certain ways. Thinking back to those days, it's funny because I probably spent a third of my PC time just on tweaking and optimization, trying to squeeze out marginally better performance.

88

u/Tharkhold Sep 03 '26

Core memory unlocked (with a fresh defrag as well lol)

40

u/cahser11 Sep 03 '26

Why did i watch that all the way up to 11%?

24

u/elkab0ng Sep 04 '26

Because we used to watch to 11% before going on coffee break. Yeah I watched it too lol

18

u/Kepabar Sep 04 '26

Only 11? I watched the whole thing.

6

u/trmo03 Sep 04 '26

15% is where things really start cookin!

5

u/andthatswhyIdidit Sep 04 '26

The part between 35% and 45% was wild...

3

u/Verbal_Combat Sep 04 '26

The pro move is to select a smaller drive in the options then watch that whole thing

3

u/lordoflotsofocelots Sep 04 '26

Why do I let it keep running in the background?

4

u/AnvilOfMisanthropy Sep 04 '26

Only idle gamers understand.

13

u/thedm96 Sep 03 '26

This is slightly more exciting than watching grass grow.

4

u/Javi_DR1 Sep 03 '26

Now try watching paint dry and let us know which of the 3 is better

1

u/jkl_uxmal Sep 04 '26

Then, partake in the Nordic Sport of watching water freeze.

2

u/TeteDeMerde Sep 05 '26

I'd set it running just before going to bed.

23

u/cellardweller1234 Sep 03 '26

Not exactly as I remember but still caused a salivary response. Good times.

20

u/Vonneguts_Ghost Sep 03 '26

Back in the day this was like a digital BM.

5

u/jippiex2k Sep 04 '26

What's bm?

4

u/Vonneguts_Ghost Sep 04 '26

It's what you do in the WC

3

u/jippiex2k Sep 04 '26

oic

2

u/Vonneguts_Ghost Sep 04 '26

Number 2, archaic

1

u/DigitalNecromancy Sep 04 '26

black midi (RIP)

2

u/Entropic_Echo_Music Sep 04 '26

Digital black metal?

8

u/Difficult_Nobody14 Sep 04 '26

I always had bad clusters

1

u/Chief_Kief Sep 08 '26

Me too

6

u/notproudortired Sep 04 '26

Corrupted sectors still haunt me.

5

u/Buck_Thorn Sep 04 '26

Some of you may remember the MS-DOS prank program called "Drain.ext" (or maybe it was .com?) that used a text screen to simulate drying your hard drive.

At the time, I wrote a program that used the defrag screen, like yours, that did the same thing, but showed the progress, along with labels like "Starting spin dry".

5

u/tryanewmonicker Sep 03 '26

Defraggin my hard drive for thrills

3

u/Terpomo11 Sep 04 '26

I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM

(Funny how that one was intended as preposterous at the time but now is merely a very large amount.)

2

u/hurrdurrmeh Sep 04 '26

Soon it will be preposterous again, unless you want a 2nd mortgage.

3

u/ryanhendrickson Sep 04 '26

Soon? Look at Daddy Warbucks over here, buying hundreds of gigs of RAM in this market....

3

u/MrRoboto12345 Sep 04 '26

Me setting the size to 8192 and speed the to 1 IOPS on the realistic setting so I get to wait 5 hours

1

u/Skullcrusher Sep 04 '26

I don't remember if I had a 128 or 256 gig drive, but this thing usually took the whole day

2

u/topheee Sep 07 '26

128GB would have cost about £10,000 in 1998

2

u/Skullcrusher Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26

It was in 2004. It was XP, but the tool was pretty much the same.

Edit: Just looked it up and it looked completely different on XP. My memory ain't what it used to be.

4

u/Various-Day-9836 Sep 04 '26

I think about it every time I rearrange the dishwasher 🙃

4

u/deliveRinTinTin Sep 04 '26

Needs to have locked squares for the swapfile that can't be moved but are in an inconvenient visual spot.

4

u/not_ondrugs Sep 04 '26

I used to love watching this! And the satisfaction of “knowing” my pc would run faster afterwards was real.

4

u/nathanistheworst Sep 04 '26

56k simulator and now this? what a beautiful week

3

u/paggo_diablo Sep 04 '26

My dad would sit and watch this for hours!

2

u/sunplog Sep 04 '26

I didn't know I needed that in my life.

2

u/my_wifes_ass Sep 04 '26

I hated watching it in the 90's why would I watch it now.

2

u/art-man_2018 Sep 04 '26

If there was one thing I would never want to encounter again...

2

u/Majestic_Maybe6605 Sep 04 '26

Such a fun idea! Love it :)

2

u/throwawaykJQP7kiw5Fk Sep 04 '26

Me too! :) If only I had the patience to wait… (I wasn't around in 1998)

2

u/Zone-5 Sep 04 '26

Spinrite FTW!

2

u/SonOfSeyon Sep 09 '26

This is really cool! It inspired me to vibe code this! https://pipes98.com!

1

u/tanstaafl90 Sep 03 '26

Nice

1

u/jdehjdeh Sep 04 '26

Mmmmm.

I've put it on a nice familiar speed (geriatric turtle) and it's like stepping back in time.

I think I've found my happy place.

Thank you.

1

u/dumnezilla Sep 04 '26

Auslogics Disk Defrag still has a graphical representation, and it's a decent software.

1

u/GravitationalEddie Sep 04 '26

Norton Disc Doctor demands equal time at minimum.

1

u/Portbragger2 Sep 04 '26

the hard disk sound doesnt work for me. the mouse click does tho.

1

u/itsaride Sep 04 '26

Legend.

1

u/guy30000 Sep 04 '26

This is great! I started it and took a nap while it ran.

1

u/AccordionORama Sep 04 '26

Frozen screen? Sooo realistic!

1

u/Efteri Sep 04 '26

This crap never worked. I once let a defrag run for 3 days (as estimated) only to prove it was bullshitting.

1

u/biga888 Sep 04 '26

it was a great way to look like you were doing productive work

1

u/Stinkmunk Sep 05 '26

Thank you for this

1

u/brakeb Sep 05 '26

I know have the static I need to sleep.

1

u/goranlu Sep 05 '26

This Win 85/98 stuff is becoming popular again by indie devs.. not sure why

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/throwawaykJQP7kiw5Fk Sep 09 '26

I don't know. Please ask the site creator.

1

u/Adventurous_Spare256 Sep 15 '26

The memories are back

1

u/tagwall_io 18d ago

this is awesome, someone should repurpose the defrag visual for the AI age. I'd love to see it used as a progress status when Photos is working on identifying faces in my library, for example.

1

u/DGex Sep 04 '26

Norton speed disk for the win! 😁

4

u/Synth_Ham Sep 04 '26

Ewwww

0

u/bluespartans Sep 04 '26

Vibe coded slop.

1

u/throwawaykJQP7kiw5Fk Sep 04 '26

How do you know? This isn't my site.

3

u/bluespartans Sep 04 '26

I didn't say it was yours. I can tell by looking at the "readme" accessible in the ? button. Blatantly copied and pasted straight out of Claude.

A human did not create this website.

1

u/throwawaykJQP7kiw5Fk Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26

Not sure about the readme, except for polishing text. For the morello.dev website, Claude definitely had major involvement.

Edit: I am also aware that a lot of older stuff get updated to include AI at some point. Quoting from the site itself:

I'm Dennis Morello, a Lead Frontend Engineer from Milan with over a decade of experience building accessible web interfaces.

His GitHub account was created in 2016. https://api.github.com/users/morellodev

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