Tag: defragment
I used to rely on Norton’s Speed Disk, then, eventually Perfect Disc and Diskeeper to optimize my HDD. Defragmenting is the idea- an antiquated process of reorganizing bytes on spinning platter so that each file is grouped into contiguous locations on the disk. Many still believe that defragmenting hard disk drives on a regular basis keeps PCs operating at peak performance. But that idea is behind the times.
Defragmenting served its purpose back when folks chugged along on 486DX4 PCs powered by 5400rpm drives. Now those where slooooow drives and extra spindle movements arising from defragmentation truly hobbled the system. But that’s no longer the case. Today, 7200-RPM hard-disk drives with monster seek and latency times are the bare minimum; most brag a 16-MB cache buffer. Couple that with Windows XP’s high speed NTFS and you’ll quickly discover that defragmenting no longer makes much improvement, if any, to system performance. I say this after thorough experimentation on my QuadCore running on a 10,000RPM Western Digital Raptor. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows XP | 2 Comments »
No matter how fast or shiny computers might be when they are new, they all seem to get slower over time. That state-of-the-art PC you bought last year might not feel like such a screamer after you install a dozen programs, load it with antispyware and antivirus tools, and download untold amounts of junk from the Internet. The slowdown might happen so gradually you hardly notice it, until one day you’re trying to open a program or file and wonder, “What happened to my poor PC?”
Whatever the cause, there are a lot of ways to help speed up Windows and make your PC work better even without upgrading your hardware. Here are some tips to help you optimize Windows Vista for faster performance. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
1. Open the command prompt with administrative privileges by clicking the Start orb, All Programs, Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as Administrator.
2. Type defrag c: -b (assuming you want to defragment files on your C: drive) and then press Enter on your keyboard. You could also type defrag –b to defrag boot and application files on all hard drives.
3. You won’t see any output in the command prompt during the defrag process.
4. When it’s finished defragmenting a new line will appear in the command prompt. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | No Comments »
Slow computer getting you down? Wish you could speed up your system so that games won’t crawl by like a slide show permanently set to slow? Well look no further! I shall share five easy steps that you can take to improve your system’s speed! Most of them are free of charge, and all of them should have some effect on your system. So without further ado, we begin with:
1. Remove spyware and adware from your system. Have you noticed recently that ads seem to pop up whenever you go to a Web page? Or that Internet speeds are about that of diseased livestock? Your system’s probably chock full of spyware. What to do? Well, thankfully there are several things you can do. First, download either Spybot-S&D or Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware, and run it. This should remove most if not all of the spyware and adware on your system. Neither of these are particularly robust, however, so we move on to: Read More»
Posted in Computer | 3 Comments »
Is Vista SP1 really the shot in the arm your Vista system needs? We’ve spent many hours strapped to our benchmarking system in a caffeine and pizza fuelled haze to uncover these very interesting results.
We tested Vista:
* as it comes out of the box (RTM — or “release to manufacturing”)
* as it comes out of the box, with all Windows Update patches applied (”RTM patched)
* with the final SP1 service pack applied
Testing Setup
Although Vista SP1 has many documented improvements, we aimed to test a particular scenario which has proved to be a major problem for pre-SP1 users: file copy speed, particularly over a network. Read More»
Posted in Hardware, Windows Vista | 4 Comments »
February 19, 2008 by
Jason The Windows Vista Disk Defragmenter has been improved over the Windows XP version, but you can’t see or use all the best features unless you run it from the command line. By default the defrag tool only defragments files smaller than 64 MB, because according to Microsoft’s benchmarks, fragments of this size, which already consist of at least 16000 contiguous clusters, have a negligible impact on performance. If you still want to defrag files larger than 64 MB too, you need to use the -w switch mentioned below to defragment files of all size.
Disk Defragmenter does not defragment files in the Recycle Bin, or files which are in use. Disk Defragmenter will not degragment Bootsect dos, Safeboot fs, Safeboot csv, Safeboot rsv, Hiberfil sys, Memory dmp, or the Windows page file. Using the -b parameter will optimize these boot files. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows Vista | No Comments »
February 15, 2008 by
Jason No one ever bought a car or a computer because it could go slower. If your hard-disk drive seems to take forever to go about its business, or if it’s having trouble keeping up with your CD-R burning software, chances are it’s time for a tune-up and defragmentation.
Step 1: Close any open applications. Disable antivirus utilities, screen savers and other background programs. Make sure you’ve quit all programs in Windows by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete once (don’t press it twice or you’ll restart the computer).
Step 2: Windows will show you a list of applications running. Highlight each application (one at a time) and click on End Task to close each one. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Hardware, Mac | 2 Comments »
January 17, 2008 by
Jason Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) is not scheduled until the second half of 2007, and Microsoft’s first shot at its successor, Windows Vista, may not be due out before “early 2007.” Meantime, many system builders (and their clients) will be keeping today’s WinXP SP2 systems running for some time.
That makes now the perfect time for revisiting your deployed XP boxes and making sure your clients are getting the best possible performance from their systems. Your clients will be happy with a faster-running OS; some may even be amazed. This is also a golden opportunity for system builders to check in with clients and pick up a little extra income from performing just such tune-ups. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 7 Comments »
October 08, 2007 by
Jason Although it is virtually handicapped in terms of the options it actually provides to the user in comparison to Windows XP, the hard disk defragmentation utility in Windows Vista is an evolution of the equivalent from the predecessor operating system. But the enhancements come essentially under the hood of the tool. In this context, the actual defragmentation engine was tuned up, as well as the management of the fragmentation process.
“By default, the defrag tool only defragments files smaller than 64 megabytes (MB). Therefore, files larger than 64 MB are not moved unnecessarily. In earlier versions of Windows operating systems, if the defrag engine was in the middle of a large move request, it could take lots of time to cancel defragmentation. In Windows Vista, the defrag engine processes input and output requests in smaller portions. Therefore, you can avoid situations where the defrag engine is busy with processing large move requests when you cancel a defragmentation session”, Microsoft explained. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows Vista | 10 Comments »
September 19, 2007 by
Jason
Free Up Disk Space
By freeing disk space, you can improve the performance of your computer. The Disk Cleanup tool helps you free up space on your hard disk. The utility identifies files that you can safely delete, and then enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files.
Use Disk Cleanup to:
• Remove temporary Internet files.
• Remove downloaded program files (such as Microsoft ActiveX controls and Java applets).
• Empty the Recycle Bin.
• Remove Windows temporary files.
• Remove optional Windows components that you don’t use.
• Remove installed programs that you no longer use. Read More»
Posted in Computer | 5 Comments »
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