How to Defragment Your Computer

Not everyone that has a computer knows how to maintain them. If you are New to computers and to the World Wide Web, one of the most important things you need to know is how to keep your computer tuned up. Like a car if your computer is not kept tuned, it will break down on you and your experience on the web can become a nightmare.

In this lesson I want to talk about a basic fundamental maintenance on your computer, called defragmenting. Since I only know about IBM Compatible Personal Computers this is specifically for those with the IBM compatible PC..

First let me explain why we have to defragment. It goes to say that if we need to defragment, that means your hard drive is fragmenting. That is the data that is written to it. Every time you run a program files are taken from your hard drive and loaded into memory than placed back on your hard drive. However the computer does not put it back where it found the file in the first place. It finds the first available space and places it there. After a while you have files from programs scattered all over the hard drive. This means that your computer has to search longer for each file it needs to run the program you are using. If your computer fragments to much your hard drive can lock up. This is not good at all.

Now let me explain what defragmenting a computer does. Windows programs comes with a program that when run takes these files and places it back where the file belongs with the rest of the program it belongs to. Now your hard drive is up and running like it should baring any other problems.

Before you can defragment you must close all your programs accept for your sound icon, sys tray, and explore. To do this press CONTROL > ALT> DELETE, and highlight each item and click end task. If another window pops up, click on end task. Repeat this procedure until you have cleared all of the items accept Sys tray, and explorer. NOTE: these two functions must not be removed. If you do you will have to reboot and start from scratch.

After closing all the extra programs then you go to START > PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES >SYSTEM TOOLS> SCANDISK. Once the scan disk window comes up follow the instructions. After a successful scan you are now ready to defragment your hard drive.

To defragment your hard drive, click on START > PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > SYSTEM TOOLS > DISK DEFRAGMENTER. When the window comes up choose your hard drive as the disk to defragment. That is usually Drive C: physical drive. Then click ok. Once you have been notified by your computer that the defragmentation of your hard drive is complete, exit the Disk Defragmenter, and then reboot. If you have no other problems on your computer, this will bring you computer up to speed.