Welcome to the How to Tune Up and Turbo-Charge Your Computer Video Series
Part 1 – Defragmenting Your Hard Drive
In this video we will be looking at how to defragment your hard drive. There are two videos on this page. Please choose between them depending on which version of Windows you have.
Windows XP Users – Watch Video #1
Windows Vista and 7 Users – Watch first 3 minutes of Video #1 and all of Video #2
To determine which version of Windows you have, right click on “Computer” or “My Computer” and select “Properties” from the drop down menu. Your version of Windows should be listed at the top of the page that comes up.
Please remember that you should ALWAYS have a backup for your computer! This goes for any time, but especially when you’re performing maintenance on it. If you have Windows 7 or Windows Vista, I still recommend you watch the first 3 minutes of the Windows XP video to see why it’s so important to do this procedure.
If you have a Mac, defragmentation is not recommended as the Mac operating system keeps your hard drive from becoming fragmented in the first place.
Defragmenting Your Hard Drive – Windows XP
Defragmenting Your Hard Drive – Windows Vista and Windows 7
Hi Robert,
Thanks for providing this series.
I evidently have Windows 8 Pro, which I have never heard of. Is that a deal-breaker?
I sure hope not!
Good luck on your venture. It sounds really worthwhile!
Kay
Hi Kay, thanks for your comment and good wishes. Windows 8 pro is not a deal breaker. There are still things you can do, but the screens may be a little different. I need to update the video series to reflect the latest versions of Windows. Take care and thanks again!
Hi Robert – lovely to hear your calm clear voice – you are SUCH a great teacher. For me personally I’m on mac- how do I defrag that ?? xx
Hi kate,
Thanks for all your kind words! It is not recommended to manually defrag a mac. They have a very sophisticated scheme for defragging themselves on a regular basis. They don’t even come with a defrag utility. If you want to try it, you’ll need a third party program. But as I said, it’s not recommended. Take care and thanks for watching!
Robert
thanks Robert, I have Dell, XP (and had sound, but seemly lost the sound, which I need for videos) my biggest problem is “the unresponive-mode
Joan.
Hi Joan, Sorry to hear about the sound on your computer. When you say you’ve lost your sound, do you mean playback or recording? Either way, I’d check your sound settings in Control Panel and make sure you’ve got the right devices selected. Also make sure the drivers for your sound card are up to date. Some programs when installed will change your sound settings so check any programs you may have installed recently. If you are still having problems, please give me a little more detail regarding your problem. Thanks, Robert
Hi Robert,
I am having some challenges with my machine. When I try to run a defrag, the computer shuts itself down before completing the process. Somewhat recently I have had many problems with an extremely slow machine and occurence of the error message ‘application X not responding’ while trying to use my machine. This happens constantly and repeatedly. If I wait long enough (minutes). the page will often respond. I have always had an active McAfee subscription so I believe chances are low that this is a virus, but maybe not. Today, jumping ahead in your videos, I used the windows feature to remove all programs I didn’t use, and bloatware, re-ran a scandisk, and was only able to run a partial defrag before the system shut down. I also have PC Tools (Symantec product), and when I run a quick optimization it shows the multiple windows error messaging files to be extremely large. It also indicates a huge number (400+) of registry errors. I do not delete the Microsoft error message report files, thinking they may be useful in diagnostics. Also, if I try to defrag using PC Tools (Symantec product) the computer shuts down in mid-process, just like it does with the microsoft defrag utility program. I have tried to go at this a number of ways, without success. Any suggestions?
Hi Jim, Sorry to hear about all these difficulties! What operating system are you running and how long has it been on your computer? Is this a laptop or a desktop? I’m just going to hazard a guess here that it’s been running for quite a while. The first things I would do is make sure you have a good backup of all your important files. This can be done with the Windows Backup software or some other. If the operating system if over 5 years old and it’s used frequently, you might want to consider an upgrade. Windows is kind of like the old PacMan game. The older it gets, the more it gets chewed up and degrades. I had a Windows XP installation that started having problems like yours. I figured it was just too old and degraded but I thought I’d give Microsoft a shot at it. They spent 3 days remotely on my computer and couldn’t fix it either. I reinstalled XP on a new partition of the same computer to rule out hardware issues, and it worked flawlessly. Microsoft was baffled and insisted it shouldn’t work that way but it proved my point. Your computer may not be to that point yet and there may be something else you can do. But please let me know how old it is and what operating system it is first. Thanks for your question and for visiting!
Thanks for this free course. I already know how to de fragment but you are a very good teacher. I look forward to the rest of your course.
Thanks for your kind commment Tatjana! I hope you enjoy the rest of the course and I look forward to any additional feedback you might have
Awesome post Robert you are providing real value on your blog. I like the way you are educating people on how to understand their PC,this was needed. Great Post!
Thanks for the feedback Rich…It’s greatly appreciated!
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain that to me! It’s not as scary as I was originally thinking it would be 😀
You’re very welcome. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have additional questions.
How often should I defragment my computer? Also…this may seem like a silly question, but how do I back up my computer?! and should I make sure it’s backed up before I defragment?
Thanks so much! I’m looking forward to the rest of the videos 😀
Hi Jessica, How often you defragment is kind of a subjective thing and depends on how much you use your computer. As a rule of thumb, once a week is a good idea. You don’t have to do a backup before defragmenting. Chances are there will be no problem and there almost never is. However, there is always a chance something will go wrong even when just using your computer. So it’s always a good idea to have a backup. If in doubt, it’s best to make one before defragmenting. The easiest way to make one is to go to your “Backup or Restore” item in your Control Panel in Windows. You can also just begin typing “Backup” in the search bar of your start menu. Then follow the instructions. I will be doing a blog post on this and probably offering an inexpensive product that will go into all the options and actually show you how to do it. Thanks for commenting and visiting and I wish you the best of success!