How to defragment your computer

Operating System: Windows Vista

With a Windows Vista operating system it will automatically defragment your computer on a preset weekly schedule by default.  Defragmenting your computer is an easy way to speed up system performance.  What it does is move all of your data into a contiguous segments on your hard drive (where your files are stored) so that you computer can retrieve the data from the drive quicker.

To check when the last defragmentation took place or to manually run the defragmenter:

        1.   Click on the Start button on the bottom left hand corner of your screen

        2.    Next you will need to click on the Control Panel button

3.       In the Control Panel I recommend switching to Classic View as it makes navigation of this screen easier.  To do this you will need to select Classic View from the left hand corner of the screen. (To undo this afterwards all you have to do is click the Control Panel Home right above the Classic View option.)

4.    Now that we have that out of the way all we have to do is scroll down and double-click Performance Information and Tools

5.    From here we will need to select the Advanced Tools from the list of Tasks on the left-hand side of the screen

6.    Now at the bottom of this screen you will find the option to Open Disk Defragmenter  NOTE:  You will have to click continue after opening this program.

7.      A quick run-down of what you seen on the screen (Starting from the Top-Left)

·         Run on a schedule (recommended):

o   This option is set by default with all installations of Windows Vista.  If you want to modify the time it runs click on the Modify Schedule button on the left side of the screen. NOTE: Running a defragmenter session while you are using the computer will cause slow system performance, it is best to schedule the program to run when you are most likely to NOT be using the computer.  In addition to this you Must also have the computer powered on in order for this to take place.

·         Last Run:

o   This shows you the last time the system was defragmented.

·         Defragment now:

o   Will run the Windows Disk Defragmenter program.  This can take quite some time if it hasn’t successfully ran on your computer for some time.  Again, it is not recommended that you run this program while you are using your computer.

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