Help me plead my case :)

I had an exam today in my software class (uses this book) and one of the questions were:

in which order should you perform optimization in Windows...

1st ____
2nd ____
3rd ____

a: defrag
b: disk cleanup/ccleaner
c: chkdsk
===============================================
I chose, B - C - A

Cleanup
Chkdsk /r
Defrag

and apparently the answer was B - A - C

Cleanup
Defrag
Chkdsk /r

(according to the book (poor reading retention on my part) and also the instructor told us a story of how long it took chkdsk to finish once because the drive was so fragmented).

I submit, why would you chance defrag writing to a bad sector? also, I remember in XP if the drive was fragmented bad enough you were forced to run chkdsk anyhow. So, what does everyone else think?

let's just say it's XP and let's also consider chkdsk a tool of an array in various methods to help system health/stability/optimization. We can disect symantics afterward (though i see your point(s))

You cant run defrag on a dirty volume, you must run chkdsk on a dirty volume before you can defrag it. But point is one needs to determine whether the volume is dirty or not. To do this, run CMD as admin and type

fsutil dirty query C:

(C: being the the drive you want to check)

if it comes out dirty you need to run chkdsk.