Defragmentation of you hard disc is an essential task to speed up your computer. All the versions of Windows have this utility and Microsoft has upgraded the defragmentation utility in each version.
Even though Microsoft has released Power defragmenter for better defragmentation (also read Speed up Computer with a better Defragmenter by Microsoft), Windows has some limitation with the defragmentation issue. More over the inbuilt defragmentation utility in Windows XP can’t defragment the System files. So here I have discussed about some tricks about the defragmentation in Windows.
Set all the drives of your computer for defragmentation
In Windows XP you can’t set all the drives for defragmentation at the same time. So if you want to defragment all the drives then you have to wait for completion of one drive and then you can set another. This is very annoying. But using a small trick you can set all your hard drive for defragmentation.
The process
- open notepad.
- Edit as the following lines there.
defrag <drive name> -f defrag <drive name> -f defrag <drive name> –f
- Save As the file in any name with .bat extension.
For example if you want to set the drives C, D, E, F then you have to edit in notepad as following:
defrag c: –f defrag d: –f defrag e: –f defrag f: –f
Now Save As the file defrag.bat in the system directory (C>Windows). You can choose any file name but don’t forget to put the extension name as .bat. Now double click on the batch file to run the defragmentation.
Tip: Clean Up Your Computer with Final Uninstaller
Defragment the system files
When you perform the defragmentation using the default defragmenter available in Microsoft Windows, it does not allow to defragment some certain system files as they are used when the system is running. So your defragmentation can’t completely defragment the system files. But there is a utility, PageDefrag by Sysinternals (Microsoft) that allows you to defragment all the system files. It is run at boot time and it defragments those system files before being locked.
How to use PageDefrag
After running the PageDefrag utility, it will list the system files along with the number of fragments in which it is.
Here you can choose to “Defragment at next boot” or “Defragment every boot”. Click on “OK” after choosing the preferred option.
When rebooting your system, it will prompt “Press any key to abort defragmentation”.
If you haven’t abort the process then the following screen will appear.
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Before defragmenting disk, you should do something in advance.
1. You should clean up the junk files and information.
Since your system work for a long time, the junk files may cram many unconscious operations may result in junk files. They are temporary files when installing the programs, cache files after browsing, DLL files left by deleting software and error files produced by shutting down the computer forcedly.
It is common that most users are inclined to use the disk cleaning up programs in the Windows, at the same time, you can also turn to certain more powerful defragmenter to help you.
2. You should check and restore any mistake in the hard disk.
Of course, you can have a try of the Disk Scan Program of Windows firstly. Although it really takes a lot of time to repair it, as long as you are patient enough, the most errors and mistakes can be restored after complete and detailed scanning.
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