Defragmentation...

Hi

Ok I have a dell PC Win XP/ 2.4 ghz P4 /512 DDR/ 80 GB HD which I've been using for around a year and a half now with no maintenance at all except for the usual HD clean up-- like uninstalling and deleting. I notice now that my computer is dramatically more slow now then when I first got it... a friend told me I needed to defrag and told me how to do so-- the only problem is- is that I waited about 2-3 hrs and it was still on 1% done...
Any tips or predictions on how long this will take?
Will this restore my original speed and performance?
Any tips on how to speed things up or find out how long the process will take?

I also need some tips on how to better clear out my hard drive-- I often find myself uninstalling things only too look at my HD space and find it the same as before I uninstalled the program/file (I'm not talking about small programs or files-- I'm talking games and DVDs- things take up entire GB's)

 

You can open your browser and clear out your temp files. Be selective on which cookies to delete- some make life a little more convenient. If you don't have Spybot and AdAware, get them, and run them, preferably before you defrag.

Mike Flynn wrote the following advice in another post, and it would be a good idea to follow all of his suggestions.

Cleanup

Configure CleanMgr to max settings
Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sageset:1
The above need only be ran once (these settings will be remembered as the default until another sageset is ran).

It will present a menu select all except compress, then

Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sagerun:1
As long as /sageset above has been ran on this computer from now on the /sagerun is the only thing that needs to run.

XpAntiSpy <http://www.webattack.com/get/xpantispy.shtml>

Pretty self explanatory, stop M$ snooping and therefore some resource stealing also.

Registry and System cleaners

RegCleaner <http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/regcleaner.shtml>
Look in first 2 cols for programs you thought you uninstalled or removed, these are the dregs left by the uninstaller. Also tag and remove any that you are POSITIVE are not supposed to be on your computer. After removing these go to the top Tools-Registry Cleanup-Do them all. Delete all it finds.

EasyClean1.7 <http://gswi.com/downloads.htm>
Run only unnecessary files and registry clean delete all it finds. If you have ME or XP in the "Unnessesary Files" type the word HELP in the skip box. Do not do Duplicate files!

System Mechanic <http://www.iolo.com/sm/index.htm> Do not do Duplicate files!

RegScrubXP http://home.carolina.rr.com/lexunfr.../RegScrubXP.htm
NOTE: W2K and XP only
Select RegScrub finds problems and remove all it finds.

Me again:
Set it to defrag and go to bed. Let us know what it's doing in the morning. If you haven't defragged in a year in a half, you can expect it to take awhile.
After you have done all of the above, you should see a dramatic increase in performance.
HTH
Johanna

 

Hello Rev,

One more piece of advice: do the defrag in safe mode and shut the screen saver off.

The background programs are never really idle and write to the HD fairly frequently even when doing "nothing ".

F5 or F8 on boot up.

Also "schedule" Chkdisk. XP won't scan the HD in normal mode, so if you ask the system to do it, XP will schedule it in the next bootup which will be automatically in safe mode.

The last free version of jvPowerTools is here http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1680

Regards - Charles

 

Charles,
I forgot to mention to shut off the screensaver. Why do the defrag in safe mode? I never have- just wondered the reason?

Johanna

 

Hi Johanna,

Defrag seems to go faster with nothing else doing random writes to the HD.

I got into the habit of doing so from my experience with 9X. There it really is a problem with the defrag starting over quite a lot if not done in safe mode. The sceen saver is one of the biggest offenders in that regard.

Regards - Charles

 

Rev2225,

You could also use Ctrl-Alt-Delete to close all your programs, except Explorer.exe, and then run scandisk and defrag. I use to do that every so often with my Win98 system.

Mike

 

Hi Mike,

*and then run scandisk and defrag.*

XP's equivalent to scandisk is Chkdisk and XP insists on running it in safe mode

I know everyone has their ways of doing things, but isn't it easier to run these system processes in safe mode instead of going thru the "3 fingered salute" to achieve minimal processes running? Have to boot up anyway afterwards.

Regards - Charles

 

Rev,
You might try running DisKeeper Lite, it is a free new defrag program that runs in "any" OS. It is much faster then MS defrag and much more efficient. You can get it from here:
http://www.executive.com/coverpage.asp
Good luck,
Houston

 

Rev2225: One thing that can cause Defrag to take a lot longer is to run it while you're still on-line. Solution? Simple: Disconnnect. And you might as well turn off your browser and any anti-virus or firewall programs while you're at it. But don't forget to turn them back on afterwards when you go back on-line.

You've been given quite a bit of advice already. Get back to us and let us know how things are working out for you.

 

Hey, thanks everyone, for the education about conflicts with programs running during defrag. But on an XP with a decent processor and enough memory, shouldn't the idle load be minimal? I didn't know it was so important to shut everything down- I often defrag with Word, ICQ and/or OE going, and have never seen a drain on the system resources. Do running programs or files get corrupted as a result of not shutting everything down? I have never had that happen to me. Have I just been lucky? Going offline makes sense, too. I never thought of that (spoiled with a cable modem), because Norton is always busy in the background.

Johanna

 

Charles,

Sorry about the wrong terminology there.

Personally, I have never had to close any programs while running these programs. Nor have I had to run them in SAFE mode. I run both programs every week, or two, and have never had a problem. My concern was that some program was accessing the drive. It was just another method instead of going through SAFE mode.

Mike

 

No, but any files that are in use while the disk defragmenter is running won't be moved. The end result is if those files are fragmented they'll stay that way. This is the reason your swap file becomes fragmented if you don't set a permanent one. It's always considered to be in use.

 

Just an update. It seams Webattack no longer hosts XP-AntiSpy. But it can be downloaded here. XP-AntiSpy

And I appreciate all of the input from all of you. This is a great site for a home-hack like me. I'm in the habit of visiting this site every day, and learning something every time I'm here. Keep up the great work people.

Thanx

 

Regarding chkdsk, is it possible that one would get a more accurate reading and repair by running it in safe mode rather than upon bootup?

The reason I ask is that I get inconsistent readings -- I can run it three times in a row and one or two times it'll find errors and the other times not. Same thing happens in NU's disk doctor.

I've already posted about this problem and the best minds on this site couldn't figure out a reason for this behavior -- or a solution. Still I was wondering if chkdsk in safe mode is more accurate.

 

Hello dkline,

*by running it in safe mode rather than upon bootup?*

AFAIK, running chkdisk at bootup is running it in safe mode.

Regards - Charles

 

Just to add to this grwoing thread - I use the command line for defrag in a batch file set up in scheduled tasks an running under the local machine administraor account. It runs once a week on each partition at 3am. I've never had a problem and when I do check manually the drives are in fine shape.

YMMV

Sam