yea what jeff said above... all you are doing is analyzing the hard drive and not defragging it. And damn haha looks like you need to run it at least 4 times :lol:
Yeah, I know the difference between just analyzing it and defragging it. I've defragged it way more than just 4 times now (each session takes forever), and nothing seems to change.
Well, that's very mysterious. I'll leave that one to TGD (the expert), other that to suggest the possibility of trying a different defragger, such as this one: http://www.download.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/3640-2086_4-10628872.html Disclaimer: I haven't used this program, and don't know anything about it, so I make no claims about its usefulness, or risks to your system if you use it.
yea for some reason all it is doing is analyzing it... Try the program jeff posted. And the way that analysis looks, once you get that thing defragged your machine is going to run ALOT faster.
Well, it does defrag it, but the changes are extremely minimal. After analyzing it, I click "defrag" when that window comes up telling me that "you should defrag". Then I usually wait an hour or so for it to do its business. When it finishes, there's still an insane amount of fragmented files left, and barely looks any different than pre-defrag. I'll give that program a shot though. Thanks.
The defrag program requires that you have some free space on your hard drive, as it moves files around during the process. The disk looks almost completely filled in the picture above. I would run a scandisk and delete a program or two. You're going to need a bigger hard drive in the very near future.
Excellent point! Perhaps other defraggers are better at using the available space (or perhaps not), but I'll bet you're right about the problem. Edit: A little clarification: I don't think that it's the actual amount of free space that is the problem (29% of the hard drive and 16 GB is plenty of room), but rather the disk is so fragmented that the defragger can't find any open space to use as temporary locations for the files as they are moved around.
Green dude! great post! I just bought a new system from Dell (gets delivered this week) and it comes with Trend Micro PC-cillin with spy and antivirus free for 36 months. How does this rate I beieve that it will be preinstalled should I just remove it? I normally dfrag and clean out temp internet files but from no on I will follow these steps along with run Norton.
Just make sure you don't install Norton on your new machine because it already has Trend Micro installed on it... its free for 3 years so just use that, it does the trick. Then just do all the steps minus the AVG Anti-Virus one and you should be all set!
Next, When I am done transferring files to my new machine (mostly photo's) I will need to scubb it clean, How do I do that?
clean your new machine? If so just run the steps after you transfer the files onto the new computer. It will scan your old files for any spy ware, viruses and will defragg them as well.
I am sure I do! I just have to find them! I have owned several PC's and always put them in the same drawer.
Alright... if you do find them just run through the system restore process. If you cant find it then you might just either have to manually go through your computer and delete files you want gone or just completely format the hard drive where the person who buys your computer needs to reinstall a version of Windows on it (dramatically reducing the price they pay :grin. Better dig em up!
Quick question about Ad-Aware. I haven't run one of these in a while so should I run the Smart System Scan or the Full System Scan. edit: nevermind, I just did the full system scan... however, I am still interested in the difference if anyone knows
the difference is that the smart scan just checks the places where malware is most likely to be (most often what it finds is tracking cookies), so the scan only takes a few minutes usually. A full system scan means it has to check every file. That takes quite a bit longer depending on how much you have installed. What I do is usually run a smart scan so it gets done quickly, but every few weeks I run a full scan to make sure I didn't miss anything. Or you could just run the full scan when you're away from your computer.