Ways to kill your windows, and how not to! Part 2

In part one of this 3 part little blurb on how to keep your windows alive and healthy we covered the woes of a slow death by desktop overload. In this installment we will talk about disk fragmentation, and the life saving process of defragmentation.

First of all, let's address the obvious question. Fragma-what? Disk fragmentation is the computers version of my dresser. When windows opens a file, it loads it up from where it finds it. But guess what, just like me and my dresser, when windows puts things back, it just shoves them in the first empty spot it can find.

You may not see a big deal here, but think about this. When it saves the file, the whole file is actually broken into a ton of little pieces. Depending on the size of the file, that could be many thousand pieces.

So think about this one, I take files out of your filing cabinet, and then put them back page by page in the first open holes I can find. Now good luck trying to find all of the parts of that file! Sure, windows almost always will succeed, but how long does it take?

The process of defragmentation is kinda like sorting out your cupboards. Windows goes through and sorts all of the files and puts them in order. Bang, much faster computer.

To just stress this point a little further let me tell you about a real incident. I got a call from Mom, her computer was sick. In fact, it couldn't even open her favorite card game. Yeah, she likes solitaire etc. But it wouldn't open. In fact, her computer would barely open at all.

So I asked her 'When did you last defrag your system?' Her only answer was 'Well, your father always took care of that.' I could only answer with one question, 'How long has dad been dead now?' We both kinda laughed.

After telling her over the phone how to defrag, she was off. It took several hours (hey, windows xp and a few card games was all she had, not even internet), and I didn't talk to her again for a few days. But when I did, she was bouncing for joy! 'My computer runs like brand new, and all my games work again!'

So how long does defragmentation take? That depends on many things, but one rule remains the same. The more frequently you do it, the less time it takes. I would recommend once a week. If you find it takes a long time, do it twice or three times a week. By defragging often enough, you can help keep your pc in great shape, and as a bonus it will take very little time to run!

Now we will get into how to do it. First we will start off with the windows xp users. Click the following:

1. Start
2. All Programs
3. Accessories
4. System Tools
5. Disk Defragmenter

Or if you want to make your life easier you can also do this:

1. Right click the 'My Computer' icon on your desktop
2. Left click 'Manage'

When you initially open Manage, then you may want to check out the second screenshot to find your way to the defrag panel. As is circled in green, the button for the defragmentor is on the left.

Once you have the defragmentor open you can select the drive you wish to defragment by click on it in the list at the top. I have circled the list in the top screenshot, and I also circled the most important button from below, which is the defragment button.

Simply make sure you have the drive selected, and say defragment.

This may take a long while, but it is worth the effort.

For windows vista users, its a slightly simpler process. Click like this:

1. the little round windows logo at the very bottom left, which replaced the start button
2. All Programs
3. Accessories
4. System Tools
5. Disk Defragmenter

There may be a box that pops up requesting permission to continue, click allow. After that all you have to do is click on Defragment Now, then when the little box comes up, click make sure all of the drives have a check mark in their boxes and click ok.

All that you have to do now is wait...

A note for windows xp users. If you analyze and it says you don't need to defrag, it doesn't really know what it's talking about. It seems under xp the defrag system waits until its really bad before it says you should defrag. Don't wait. Do it.

A note for windows vista users. Windows Vista has a scheduler for the degrag and is probably already set. Well, this is the story. If you want something done right, do it yourself!

Have a good one, and I hope this helps!

Trin