>>Does anyone have any idea as to how to explain this? Does anyone know how to put a stop to this? I plan to leave the machine sitting inactive again for a longer while and see if the .DBFs later get defragmented too.
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>Perhaps MS now has a side deal with disk manufactures and this is intended to burn your HDs out that much faster.
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>Actually, I turned this "stuff" off back in Win98 ... "Scheduled Tasks" it was called, and included Scan-Disk, Defrag, PC-Health, etc.
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>I did not like the idea of MS "playing" with my systems when I was not around either.
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>MS does NOT know best.

Well, after defragmenting, HD is burned much LESS because no file fragmenting. Did you thought about this?

IMO, I do not think MS would trouble about such services if it is not worth in general. If MS does this, as you said, because some deal with disk manufacturers, MS would be quickly sued or burned by users.

Words like yours in many cases start flame wars against MS for no real reasons. Please, it is so old story, I'm tired by that...