Disk Defragmenter 

When you save a file to the hard drive, the operating system will try to find a space large enough to hold the entire file. If it can’t, it will write a little here and there until the file is written to the hard drive in many fragments. Over time, the drive becomes fragmented, which will cause your computer to slow down. It takes much longer for the computer to read fragmented files, because the drive has to jump around reading all the little pieces.

To run Disk Defrag:

1. Close all programs
   
   
2. Left-click start
   
   
3. Highlight Programs
   
   
4. Go to Accessories, then System Tools and left-click Disk Defragmenter.

   

5. Select the drive to defragment (usually c:), and click OK. The defragmenting process will begin.
   

TIP: To check when you last scanned, defragmented, and backed up your drives. From the Desktop:

1. Double left-click My Computer
2. With the drive highlighted, right-click and select Properties from the drop-down menu.



3. The General menu displays the drive used and free space

4. Left-click the Tools tab.

5. The Tools menu shows the frequency of your maintenance in days.

If you notice you haven’t run ScanDisk, Backup, or Defragmenter recently, you can run them directly from that menu.

Run An Up-Dated Virus Detector Program on the hard drive, on any disk that may have been in another machine, or on any file downloaded from the Internet. Examples of Virus Detectors:  McAfee, Norton, etc.