Automatic Defrag

Automatic Defrag

As you know over time the Windows filing system can become disorganised and this will eventually lead to a slow down and a reduction in performance.

‘Defragging’ the hard drive can restore order but most of us forget to do it regularly and leave it until the system has started to slow down.

Here’s a way to program Windows to automatically Defrag your drives once a month or every few weeks.

Go to Start > Control Panel and click Performance and Maintenance then Scheduled Tasks (or just go direct to Scheduled Task in Windows XP) and double-click Add Scheduled Task. This will launch the Scheduled Tasks Wizard.

Click Next then the Browse button to C:\WINDOWS\system32, click defrag.exe and select Open. Now you can give it a name and set the timings for defrag to run and when you have finished check the box ‘Open Advanced Properties …’. If there’s more than one User Account on your PC you may want to set up a Password, otherwise leave the fields blank.

To finish off in the Run line add n the drive letter for the disc you want to defrag after the command, so it should look like this: C:\WINDOWS\system32\defrag.exe c: click OK and it is set.