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System Maintenance & Care
Optimization: Your Guide to System Care, Back-up

Disk Defragmenting

In most cases if you are using Microsoft Disk Defragmenter, it's a timely process. Many factors can affect the process. The more processing power and RAM you have the faster it will be accomplished. Hard drive size is also a factor.

However, to optimize or improve the speed of this task, do not run any other programs at the same time. It is best if you plan to defrag when you aren't using your computer to perform other tasks so it can do that and that only.

Make sure to close/disable all background programs with the exception of "EXPLORER" and "SYSTRAY". Background programs continue to perform work and inhibit the process.

Antivirus software is notorious for slowing down machines...a reasonable concession for protection from viruses, but certainly not while defragging.

You can either manually shut down all your programs and disable your anti-virus program temporarily before you start the defrag process, or you can close background programs by pressing [CTRL] + [ALT] + [DEL] simultaneously one time only. (CAUTION: If you press these keys more than once, your system will be shut down).

By pressing [CTRL] + [ALT] + [DEL], a window will be opened listing the items (programs) that are running. Most of these will be listed with very strange names not easily identifiable as being associated with any particular program you are aware of running.

Select one and click "End Task". Some programs will not close until the second time you do this and even then will throw a "splash" (a new window) alerting you to the attempt to close the program, that it is not responding and are you sure you want to close it. If this happens you will again select "End Task".

Do this until the only things left are Explorer and Systray. (NOTE: if you have a software driven mouse with multiple buttons that allow for multiple user defined functions, this will most likely be disabled as well.)

All programs closed can be re-opened by you later and will be reloaded by default when you restart your system.

Once all background programs are closed, you are free to start your disk defragmentation.

I would recommend that this be done overnight as it generally takes several hours.

There are other programs that can defrag faster than Microsoft. I use Speed Disk which is a component of Norton Utilities/Norton System Works, a Symantec product and it works very well.

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