Your operating system works best when all of the files on the hard disk are organised into one (or a few) large blocks. When files are added/deleted, settings changed and programs are installed and uninstalled, files on the hard disk become fragmented and move on the disk. Therefore, when these files are requested by the user, the operating system must work harder to find the information which slows down the whole process. The more fragmentation the slower the machine.
Windows Disk Defragmenter reorganises these files and thus improves performance.
To use Disk Defragmenter: Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter
In the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, click the drives that you want to defragment, and then click the Analyze button. After the disk is analyzed, a dialog box appears, letting you know whether you should defragment the analyzed drives.
To defragment the selected drive or drives, click the Defragment button.
After the defragmentation is complete, Disk Defragmenter displays the results.
To display detailed information about the defragmented disk or partition, click View Report.
To close the View Report dialog box, click Close
To close the Disk Defragmenter utility, click the Close button on the title bar of the window.
So this concludes our mission to speed up XP and hopefully you have found some good tips for maintaining your PC aswell.
I'm always happy to have some feedback so please feel free to post a comment :-)
Hey man, thanks very much! This stuff is so basic, yet so important, and it seems as though very few 'average' computer users know this.
ReplyDeleteNice, simple language and step-by-step process too. Keep it up ! ;-)